


The More Things Stay the Same

by Quinara



Series: Turn and Face the Strain [1]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: seasonal_spuffy, Crossover, F/M, season: a3, season: b6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-02
Updated: 2011-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:19:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy goes to Wesley instead of Tara about the resurrection spell.  (Post DMP & Loyalty.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hit the Button, Then It Beeps

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ comm Seasonal Spuffy's Spring 2011 round. Big thanks to Bogwitch for betaing! The chapter titles are from Doublemeat Palace.

There were sixty hours until her next shift. Sixty. Six-oh. Two and a half days, exactly.

The problem was, standing in her own clothes and coat, looking out into the Doubemeat parking lot, Buffy didn’t know what to do.

Lorraine seemed to have really taken it to heart that Buffy wanted to work, that was the thing, and she still felt guilty about getting fired, so she’d been trying really hard to be good. But being good, being reliable, turning up on time and lugging around boxes of meat without complaint, that was rare in the Doublemeat workforce. It came with things like Lorraine wanting her there for casual supervising and her name being given out when people needed someone to cover their hours, which led to double shifts and her own days off getting shunted around – and shunted again.

It had been twelve days since she’d had twenty-four hours break, five days since she’d done more than patrol and sleep. And that meant five days since she’d done Spike, essentially, because she’d barred him from coming by. “Boyfriends aren’t good for productivity,” Lorraine had said, the first time she’d seen Buffy’s lipstick smudged, and that had been the end of that.

Four hours ago Buffy had sat alone in the break room and wept, watching the clock count down to the time she had to smile again. Nickelback had been playing that awful song of theirs for the seventh time that day, unnecessarily reminding her of what she really was, and her stomach had been cramping with hunger. She hadn’t been able to bear bringing the Medley smell on her hands near her face, let alone a whole burger to her mouth, so she’d drunk Fanta mixed with Coke and pretended the concoction covered enough food groups.

Now she was free, but with sixty hours ticking away.

It was night, the sky was dark, which meant she should be patrolling. Spike would be awake, which meant she could see him, burn away the clock ticking in her mind and burn away everything, and it was tempting – because, really, could she even be herself for sixty whole hours? Maybe it would be best to be his for a while.

But, see, that was wrong, that was a wrong thing to feel.

A little desperate, Buffy asked herself, what else could you do in two days? And a half. There had to be things, didn’t there? She could make a list.

And so, sitting down on the parking lot’s wall, Buffy pulled her diary out of her bag. It was hers from 2000, because she’d needed one for work and had kept on putting off getting another from the store, but that didn’t _really_ matter, because the numbers were all there (plus a February 29 for luck). She was never sure what day of the week it was anyway. Scratching out ‘ _DATE! – 8.30_ ’ to replace it with ‘ _DMP 5 – 4_ ’ had become routine, so she turned past her list of ‘ _Riley Pros and Cons_ ’ with ease to stare at the blank lines of the new Notes page.

That was when she realised she didn’t have a pen.

No list for Buffy, it seemed.

Grabbing the pages in her hand, Buffy flicked through the diary in full, trying see if she’d made any such list before – Anywhere But Here, hadn’t they used to play that? But there was nothing, just a year of minutiae, bookended by Riley dates and hospital appointments (January’s date nights all blacked out) – apart from… _There_ , near the end of March: a phone number. She’d taken it down out of politeness, but had never really seen the need for it.

She thought. Ever since she’d found out that the spell had brought her back wrong, she’d been thinking, on and off, that she should really check out how – but she’d been scared to ask anyone and definitely sure she didn’t want to ask Willow. Giles was too far away, and bound to ask far too many questions. But now there was a number, the initials WWP and sixty hours of time; she had two quarters in her pocket and a bus station who knew her name. There was a phone in the parking lot.

Wondering if this was what it felt like to take control of her destiny (and you’d really think she’d know), Buffy walked over to the phone and dialled.

She didn’t think about the time, she remembered that later, but it picked up anyway. “… Hello?”

“Uh.” She hesitated. The voice sounded distracted – and gravelly. “Is that Wesley?”

“Who is this?” Add suspicious. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

“It’s, um, Buffy?”

Suspicion resolved into a sigh of familiarity – to be followed by a somewhat resentful, “Buffy.”

She was losing her nerve with every second and there was fear or something like it churning in her stomach – but that was the wrongness, wasn’t it? The thing she had to fix. “Sorry to call like this, but… Can I come see you?” she forced herself to ask, feigning a chirpy friendship they’d never had. “It’s about a research thing. A spell. Is this a bad time? You said I could call whenever…” And he had, she could remember that. When he’d been beaten up by Faith, but still looking pious, he’d told her he was there if she ever needed him, because she’d been meant as his duty for life.

God, had she ever been so young she’d pooh-poohed that?

Wesley laughed, but it sounded as bad as when she did, as though this was the perfect end to a perfectly terrible day. “Oh, certainly, come…” he said. “Yours will be a welcome distraction, I dare say, from my current project.” That piqued her interest mildly, because it was keeping him up pretty long after office hours, if nothing else. Not that it was any of her business.

“Where can I find you?” she asked. He told her. She went.

* * *

Fifty-seven hours left.

Whatever Buffy expected, walking into the Hyperion, it wasn’t Angel with a sleeping baby in his arms.

“Angel?” she asked, feeling slightly gratified her sense of _huh?_ was stronger than the embarrassing amount of wistfulness that always came out when she said his name. Not that they could get back together, not now while she was wrong, but his name came with a tone. She couldn’t help it.

“Hey, Buffy,” Angel replied, sounding almost chipper. “Wes said you were coming, so I stayed up. And I think this little guy wanted to see you –” He gestured, raising the baby slightly in his arms. It was still strange. “– because he wouldn’t settle at _all_.”

“You have a baby,” she said.

Angel held it closer to his chest, as if she were trying to take it away. At least someone else was defensive. “He – his mother died,” he said shortly. “What’s new with you, anyway? You, uh, are you working in fast food?”

Crap. So much for keeping that particularly shameful detail a secret; she’d thought the odour had dissipated on the bus, but apparently she’d got used to it. Again. “You smelled the smell, huh?” she said, coming further into the lobby, down the steps so she could lean against the back of a comfy chair. There was no use trying to hide it now.

“Only a little,” he told her as she walked, wincing like he hadn’t meant to say anything. “I mean, that and… Never mind.”

What else? What else could he smell on her? When had she last washed these jeans?

No, Buffy thought, never mind. Screw that. She’d left Sunnydale behind, smell notwithstanding, and didn’t have to worry about it. She didn’t want to know.

“Is Wesley here?” she asked, causing Angel to jump slightly at the abruptness.

“Uh, yeah,” he replied, nodding towards a door by the reception desk. “He’s in his office.”

She started walking again, across the marble floor and out of the lobby. “Thanks.”

Unfortunately, when she knocked and let herself into the office, Wesley did not look like a man who wanted distraction from a resurrected ex-charge. Books were stacked like battlements around his desk, protecting him, or attempting to, from whatever was causing the twitchy (terrified?) look on his face. She’d never thought the guy had stubble to grow, and yet here was living proof.

“Oh, yes, Buffy,” he said when he finally recognised her, wide eyes relaxing. “Hello. You got here quickly…” He shut something papery in front of him. “What can I help you with?”

Then he started moving the books around, restacking them in a way that he presumably meant to be welcoming. The more of his desk Buffy could see, however, the less inclined to speak she became – so in the end she blurted it out as quickly as she could, forgoing all greeting: “You know that Willow and the gang brought me back to life, right?” Wesley blinked rapidly, but seemed to keep up, nodding once as though he appreciated her getting to the point. “Well, I think the spell went wrong – so was really hoping someone could check. Like you, maybe. Please?”

It was enough, thankfully, to make Wesley pause. He cradled a particularly large and battered volume in his hands, focusing on the stained brown leather before looking up at her, expression pensive. “I’m not sure what I can do – you might be better off talking to one of mine and Angel’s colleagues…”

“Please,” she repeated, not wanting to be referred to a stranger and not wanting to explain any more than she had to. “Could you do what you can? I know it’s a lot to ask, but…” Oh, hell, she was desperate. And this was really impolite, seriously so, but she had to ask. If she left it any longer…

“I can try,” he replied, placing the book to one side with the others; she held in her relief. “I have some notes at my apartment which may be of help,” he said, like he was organising his thoughts. “If you give me a moment to finish here, we can go and look them over.”

“Sure,” she replied, meeting his smile with teeth, backing away from where she was pretty certain she wasn’t welcome.

As she turned out of the doorway, however, she bumped straight into Angel, now sans baby. “Hey!” she said, before she could help it. “You’re supposed to be the one who doesn’t –”

She stopped herself. He looked at her strangely, but she brushed past him, hiding her blush and definitely not providing an explanation about who she was referring to. _Ooh, look at this interior, very nice and distracting. What would you call it, art deco?_

“Buffy,” Angel called after her, exasperated. “What did you just say to Wes?”

“Nothing,” she replied, crossing her arms defensively. “And has no one ever told you it’s impolite to eavesdrop?”

To that he didn’t say anything, and, after being stared at earnestly for a few seconds, she found herself taking the nearest seat, a round couch in the centre of the room, pointedly looking at the ceiling. Which was _high_.

Angel continued not to speak and, for a while, she was happy to let the silence pass. Silence, however, was not something she got much practice with these days, so eventually the quiet grew too heavy on her shoulders. “It’s all fixable,” she said into the emptiness of the lobby, abrasive in the hope that would be enough to make Angel leave her alone. “When I’ve figured out what’s causing it, it’ll be fixable.” The silence still hung. “I’ll fix it,” she asserted, finally glancing at him again. “Someone will fix it.”

Taking her glance as an invitation, however, Angel sat down next to her. He kept a comfortable distance away on the couch, but seemed to decide they were talking now. “What even makes you think there’s something wrong?” he asked.

She replied instinctively, looking away to see Spike’s snarl in her mind and feeling his fist against her face, “Nothing.” The moment she said it, of course, she realised it wasn’t enough to get her off the hook. “I mean,” she continued. “Lots of little things. Nothing to worry about.” Spike’s teeth broke skin the last time and she didn’t even notice when it happened. “I guess…” She breaks _his_ skin more often than not. “It’s just that I keep making bad choices, with no obvious reason why.”

Thinking that might be enough, she turned back, grim-little-toaster smile on her face.

Angel wasn’t buying it. “We all make bad choices, Buffy,” he said, sympathetic but still prodding her.

“Not like this,” she tried to make him understand. This was worse. This was always worse, because this was tying a naked vampire spread-eagled to the bedposts and licking him inside out, until he cried. “This is a whole new category of worse.” And she didn’t even care if that discounted what she’d said a second ago.

“It always is,” Angel said, sanguine. Then he frowned. “But you’ve gotta remember,” he continued, “that bad choices don’t mean you’re a bad person. And things don’t always go the way you think they will.”

The Spike in her head was still laughing until she banished him away. “Huh?” It was true that her memory of Angel-speak was hazy these days, but she didn’t quite remember him being one for bland optimistic platitudes… He sounded like chicken soup.

“I’m just saying,” Angel replied, slightly defensively, glancing at the bassinet where they’d been standing before. “Things can turn out better than you think, even if you don’t see a way out there and then. Getting stuck in bad decisions doesn’t mean you’ve…”

“Come back wrong?” she finished for him, a little annoyed. If only she could tell him about the chip without telling him about Spike. “Believe me, there are other reasons.”

“Right,” Angel agreed, mirroring her tone. As though she wasn’t listening to _him_. “Sure. All I’m trying to say is…” She wasn’t sure why he was defending the potential of bad choices so strongly, but he frowned harder, saying, “The future’s not set in stone. Bad ideas can go good, just like good ideas can go bad. Have you ever…” He stopped, breathed. “Camus had this line, right?” Buffy rolled her eyes, because she’d forgotten the fetish for book-guys with funny names, but Angel kept on, “Hear me out. I can’t remember where he wrote it, but he said that evil comes from ignorance, not good or bad intentions. I think it goes back to Socrates, even – that we make decisions based on what we know and how we think the consequences are gonna weigh out one way or the other. We don’t set out to be bad.”

“Well, yeah,” Buffy replied, not sure what she was supposed to be getting. “Exactly. Things seem like a good idea at the time.” _Like when you’re backed against a wall with a flint-sharp body making sparks against yours._ “But they’re bad, and you should realise.”

“No, that’s the problem,” Angel insisted, his gaze drifting again to the bassinet. “Because it’s impossible to know everything that’s gonna happen. You can’t make a perfect decision without perfect knowledge, which no one has. So judging something as a good choice or a bad one isn’t that easy.”

“But some are plain bad. Choices, I mean.” Buffy kept her voice firm, drawing Angel’s attention back to her. “Killing people? That’s a bad. Killers? Vampires? They’re _evil_ , not misguided.”

This vampire, however, sighed, slumping where he sat but nevertheless still trying, “But what’s the cause of evil? What does a soul actually change?”

Watching him sceptically, Buffy got the feeling Angel had been asking that question for the last hundred years. He was deep, at least sometimes, and always had been, but she’d never been any good at reading him. Now, though, she thought she could almost see something in the way his shoulders were set and the way he frowned: a sense of displacement, maybe, which was as repellent as it was attractive. It was what made her let him continue.

“When I got my soul,” Angel said at last, careful over his words, “it took a long time to become who I am. And I’m in a good place, but that doesn’t mean everything I did to get here was good. I made a lot of bad choices.” Then, however, he shook himself, apparently remembering what he was trying to argue as he met her eyes again. “But that’s the thing,” he said. “Some of my bad choices? They came good anyway.”

 _And yours could too_. That was the implication. It annoyed her. It annoyed her more the more she thought about it and the more he tried to read her in return, because he didn’t _know_ , he had no _idea_ … “How can you say that?” she demanded. “Like, what, it doesn’t matter what we choose? Fate’s gonna get fatey? It _matters_ , because we can make a judgement. That’s what having a soul means. Without that –” She saw Spike’s face again, smug and smiling even in the filtered light of day. Naked like it didn’t matter at all what he’d done the night before. Like it didn’t matter that they hadn’t stopped to think. “Without that we’re nothing. We’re empty and hollow and – _evil_. When Angelus –”

“When _I_ ,” Angel cut her off, shifting on the couch to sit taller again.

Buffy shut up. How had they ended up talking about this? She didn’t want to be talking about this – and yet Angel seemed really fixed on saying his piece. He must have been pretty pleased with his bad stuff turning good.

Setting his jaw, Angel admonished her, “It’s pretty intense becoming a vampire, Buffy. The demon sets up inside you, but you still feel… I always felt like myself, always wanted the same things; all that seemed to change was what I was willing to do to get them.” At her glare, he sighed. “And that’s evil,” he accepted, “but the root of it, where it all comes from? Sometimes I think… I stopped thinking about the future, the moment I died. It all fell away, leaving nothing but me, and – Darla, and… OK, so it’s not ‘cool’ to say this anymore, but there was, you know, _art_. I was born fifty years too late, but I didn’t care; there was so much passion in the world, in the old sense, I mean, and I could feel it, got swept up in it, didn’t stop for a moment to see where it was taking me. Sometimes I think that’s what it was.” Solemnly he looked at her, finishing, “Do you understand? I wasn’t empty; that world around me, I was – I was in love with it.”

Stiff on the couch’s old stuffing, Buffy couldn’t help responding then, “…love?”

“Yeah;” Angel replied, before conceding, “not in a way that meant anything, but that’s what it felt like. That ‘love’ consumed me without anything to stop it, without anything to make me think twice – until my soul came back I never even noticed how I’d changed.” He shook his head, as if convincing himself. “But it wasn’t real. It _defined_ me, swallowed me whole; by that point you couldn’t say I was really feeling it at all.”

Looking down to her pale and soap-bitten hands, Buffy murmured, “I used to dream of loving like that.” And the joke was on her, because at one time she’d thought she did.

There was a pause before Angel responded, but Buffy didn’t look up. When he spoke it was sincere: “I hope you never do.”

She still wasn’t sure she understood, but that was the moment Wesley’s door opened and she remembered all the things she was trying to keep Angel from knowing. It made speaking about anything else rather difficult.

“Buffy?” Wesley asked hesitantly, pulling on his jacket as he shut off the light in his office. “Are you ready to go?”

“Sure,” she replied, trying to smile easily, but not quite managing. Picking up her bag, she left Angel with a quick smile and an aborted wave, never quite sure how to say goodbye to him.

As she followed Wesley out of the door, however, Angel hailed her heels, “Hey, uh, um…” He was on his feet and sounded like this was what he’d meant to say this at the start. “I don’t know what you’re doing with him, but I can be here if you ever want to talk about Spike with actual words…”

How did he…? She was going to ignore that. Turn around and keep on walking, one foot in front of the other. Out of the door past Wesley’s questioning gaze.

* * *

She should have known something was up when she found out Wesley rode a motorcycle, but it was only when she entered his apartment that Buffy realised things were seriously not OK. The place was a mess: books and papers piled everywhere; dirty plates and cups in odd places, like they’d been pushed out of the way to be cleaned another time. There were only fifty-six hours to go, but she couldn’t not ask, “What _is_ it that you’re working on, anyway?”

“Um…” Wesley avoided, clearing a space for her to sit on the couch beside a conspicuously empty armchair. “Nothing important.” He looked at the coffee table, as though trying to work out whether it would be polite to clear that too, but then he thought better of it. “Tell me about your problem,” came the rather eager directive; he sat down and looked at her – too hard. “And Spike. Have I gathered correctly that they’re connected? I assume you don’t want Angel to know, but, well; I promise I can keep a secret.”

Sighing, Buffy sat in the clear couch space and wondered how much she’d given away as she’d left the hotel. She could feel her defensiveness starting to swallow the truth as far down as it would go, but she knew she would have to tell Wesley at least the bare bones of the problem. Anyway, she told herself, so maybe he was smart, but he almost certainly wasn’t any less emotionally stunted than he’d been in Sunnydale; he probably wouldn’t guess the rest. And so she began, “You know Spike has the chip, right?”

“The one that shocks him should he harm a human?” Wesley replied blandly, blinking guilelessly behind his glasses. She _knew_ he’d kept up-to-date; maybe through Giles? Watchers couldn’t help it. “Yes, Willow mentioned it when she, er, brought the news of your…”

“Oh.” Buffy looked away for a second. Of course, stuff happened when she was gone. There were three whole months she didn’t know about. “Yeah, right, so –” This was it, she supposed, the moment to tell someone. No more hiding. Nothing else for it but to see that academic stare go dark. “The thing is,” she said, “since I’ve got back? The chip’s stopped working on me.”

Strangely, Wesley seemed to understand, looking pensive and a little calculating, but otherwise not at all taken aback. She almost relaxed –

– but that, of course, was the moment when a shiver shot up her spine and three thudding bangs sounded out as knocks on the door. Wesley shot up like a caffeinated rabbit; she cringed deeper into the couch. Just when she thought she was getting away…

“Oi, Slayer!” came the muffled shout through the door. “Open up; I know you’re in there.”

“What is he…?” Wesley began, looking panicked. “The neighbours –”

It was the look in Wesley’s eyes that did it: the all-consuming fear of the unknown, of an entirely new problem to face that he didn’t know how to solve. Buffy had felt it too many times to let somebody else suffer, and so she forced herself out of the chair and over to the door, turning the latch and pulling the handle back hard. The movement shot some fire into her, so she hissed through the gap above the chain, “What are you doing here?”

Spike looked at her with narrowed eyes, left hand raised to knock now drifting to the door frame. Resting against his forearm, he leaned in. “What do you _think_?”

Raising her chin, she accused, “I think that there’s no way in hell you could have known where I was without stalking me.”

“You’d like that wouldn’t you?” He exhaled, nostrils flaring as he dropped his head closer – so close she thought she could feel his breath thrumming along the threshold’s barrier. “Have me watching you from every shadow, waiting on your every whim.” The blue of his eyes was so clear, so free from any hesitation or uncertainty, that she couldn’t help but think back to what Angel said – about what he called love and about what Spike called the same. Because that was the wrong word, that would always be the wrong word. This _obsession_ , it was inhuman. There was no room in it for anything else but her. “Let you slip into the shadows any time you pleased and have my –”

“You disgust me,” she snarled, unable to keep the feeling inside. That he would do that, that he _could_ do that, with no thought for anything else… “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

It was then, however, that his eyes turned hard. “Funny thing, that,” he bit out like a demon. “I did.”

She stilled, thoughts stopping.

Not letting up, Spike continued, “I stopped coming round your sodding work, since you said I’d get you fired; thought you’d visit when you had time.” He laughed softly, tonguing his teeth. “Turns out, though, that what I thought was a week in double-shift hell really involved you skipping off to the city, leaving your sister worried sick and sobbing in my crypt that some nasty had had its day.”

Oh, shit.

_Dawn._

The blood drained from Buffy’s face and she did nothing but stare at him. How could she have forgotten about _Dawn_? They’d been at home and awake together sometime… Not yesterday, but earlier – and Buffy had said she’d be getting a break, that they’d do things. That they and the gang would do things. _That_ was what she’d been meaning to do. That was what you did with sixty hours.

“I didn’t…” she began. “I had to get away,” she tried to insist – but her voice was too soft, scared now of what she’d done. Dawn was her reason for living, the reason why she walked out of the crypt every morning she was lost there, why she fried and stacked and mopped and served. Without Dawn… What was there? What did she have? She’d told Willow just recently that she didn’t want to die, but, honestly, she wasn’t sure she could live if it was just for herself. She couldn’t risk forgetting, shouldn’t have forgotten, _couldn’t_ care less for her sister than Spike did. “I had to go.”

“Fine,” he said harshly, accepting her excuse too readily, like he always did. “But, seriously, who is this git, Buffy?” Apparently Spike was done with one insult and moving on to another, aiming a forceful nod over her head. “Wasn’t overly surprised you’d go crying to Angel, but, gotta say, it’s a new low to find out you’re stringing some other bloke along…”

“What?” she murmured, not quite keeping up with the conversation. The implication finally settled, however, and that really did disgust her. Not that Spike didn’t. Oh, whatever – the important point was, “ _Eww_. You think Wesley and I – Spike, that’s…”

“Well,” he began, slouching with an impish sort of grumpiness – which was thoroughly distracting. “What was I supposed to think, seeing you snuggled up on his bike, going back to his… Call that seduction in my book.”

He wasn’t even joking. But there was a world of difference between catching a ride from Wesley and sitting up close behind Spike, reaching her arms around his waist and feeling the muscles twitch as he fought for concentration. There was nothing like taking her hand lower when the road was empty, daring him to wipe out as her fingers curled, to burn them both up to nothing in a ditch. There was nothing like punishing him when they got back safe.

_And you think you aren’t wrong, that your thoughts can go from your sister to this?_

“For heaven’s sake, Buffy,” came the call from a recovering Wesley, suddenly cutting through the images in her mind. Adrenaline flushed through her as she worried how much he’d worked out. “If he’s here for you, let him in. In fact, come in, Spike; I haven’t got all night and I doubt you think a Watcher’s apartment is the easiest place for a kill. Even a disgraced one as I.”

She took as much satisfaction as she could in shutting the door on Spike’s smirking face – before reluctantly taking off the chain and letting him inside. He brushed past her with a wink, fingers tracing across her thigh in a way that probably looked like an accident, but felt like anything but.

Why did he always have to be so…?

“Disgraced, eh?” Spike greeted Wesley behind her, strutting like a cock and sneering like an evil thing. “Better watch that, mate, else you’ll end up with the likes of me.”

With his arms crossed, all Wesley said, weary and dry, was, “And what would that be, exactly? Incapacitated? Neutered?”

Spike paused for a second, as if recalculating after his bluff had failed. But then he continued, because apparently the posturing was necessary. “Oh, just you wait,” he said, darkly. “I’ll show you what –”

“Yes, yes,” Wesley dismissed, passing by him and shutting the door still open in Buffy’s hand. She’d meant to do that… He was quickly away, however, moving back to the coffee table and tacitly inviting them to sit. “Really I meant it when I said I wanted to get on.” They sat; her far away from Spike, though, even when he’d cleared his own space, his legs spread wide to encroach upon hers. Wesley declined to look down. “Buffy tells me you’ve been able to harm her since she was resurrected.”

“She said…?” Spike was surprised again, words curling close to that awful tentative tone that made her squirm. He looked at her, eyes light and mouth almost smiling.

“Sure.” She shrugged it off. “I’m gonna find out what’s wrong with me and then I _will_ fix it.” And it was all going to go away, she tried to tell him with her eyes. There would be no more self-contradiction, no more weakness, just a life without him, perfect and right. And Dawn, and her friends. She would remember them again.

It should have made his smile shift, but for some reason it didn’t.

“We’ll see about that,” Wesley said, a little stiff as he looked between them – but she was certain that didn’t mean anything. The guy barely knew her; no way was he less oblivious than Xander. “I’ll do what I can, but I need to know the particulars. What spell was it that was used?”

“I…”

Buffy didn’t know. She stared, hardly believing it; she hadn’t got a clue. Obviously she hadn’t thought this through – that was clearer every second that ticked by – but how could she not even know what spell had brought her back from the grave? Was there _no_ information in her mind anymore? She knew the prices for every Doublemeat combo, the medication her mom had needed giving (that was never going anywhere), but otherwise…

“Fawn’s blood,” Spike supplied, cutting in. She wasn’t grateful. She wasn’t. “The witch who did it –”

“Willow,” Wesley accepted.

Spike nodded and Buffy wordlessly let him speak. “The night of the spell, Willow came back to the house and she stank of fawn’s blood, had it on her face. And –” His jaw clenched. “– bollocks.” When she caught his eye, he was miserably apologetic, just for a second – before he explained, “Few weeks before, one of the others – Anya, she asked me about suppliers for ritual ceramics.” Glaring at Wesley as if that had _better_ make sense, he asked, “That do anything for you?”

“Was it by any chance the Urn of Osiris she was looking for?” came the strangely hopeful reply as Wesley got out of his seat – to putter around some notebooks on a shelf, opening them and flicking through their contents. “As I said, we had – I happened to do some rather extensive research on resurrection spells about a year ago.” He explained, “Although it wasn’t relevant to our – situation, I… Yes!” A particular page caught his attention. “The Plea to Osiris, with an urn and vino de madre – which could easily present as fawn, I suppose – for human warriors dead from mystical means.” Wesley’s eyes met hers once more and Buffy swallowed, a little shudder going through her bones to hear herself described so very simply. How far was it from a warrior to weapon?

“You sure that’s the one?” Spike asked.

“I believe the specifics are rather, well, specific,” Wesley replied, turning over what looked like very scant notes on the spell before returning the book to the shelf. “I can easily access the Brekenkrieg Grimoire and make certain.”

“Right,” Spike insisted, taking control like he had no right to do. “Then you do that and Buffy can ring her sis.”

For some reason there was a cordless stand on his left hand side and he was already passing the receiver to her, even as Wesley spluttered, “It will have to wait until morning. I’m not going in again now – and since it seems you will be taking advantage of my hospitality rather than Angel’s, as would be far more sensible – or even staying in a commercial hotel, don’t people do that? Since I’m doing this, the _least_ I might ask, I think, is to have a decent night’s …”

“That’s fine,” Buffy said distractedly, dialling home even as Spike stood up in anger. Her fingers were trembling; she wasn’t sure she could deal with the argument. More than that, she had a home she hadn’t phoned, responsibility she’d checked out on. What she wanted had to be put to one side, just for now.

She went into the kitchen to make the call. Left in the living room (she could hear, with absent surprise), Wesley began moving things around and muttering as he arranged bed linen, presumably out of irrepressible politeness, if not a simple fear of sleep. Spike stayed with her, watching while her sister made her cry.

* * *

When she slept Buffy dreamt of boxes, like she always did, and woke up unable to breathe. Upholstery was there in front of her, one rip already showing stuffing, tearing wider beneath her fingernails. She panicked, because it shouldn’t have been real, then backed away, realising as she rolled that it was only a couch, but falling all the same, knees planting into softness that brought a shout from the body beneath her.

Still she was shaking, because there was too much fabric beneath her hands; she could feel it on her nails. She tried to bat it away, jerking awkwardly onto various limbs, one at a time, pushing it and finding skin that she could balance on, knees on hips and hands clutching at shoulders. Shivering, she kneeled there.

It was then, however, that firm hands took her waist and lifted her up to ease her down. She found a mouth and kissed it desperately, tasting nothing of gravedirt or mouldering cotton, nothing of Doublemeat grease or industrial cleaner; her fingernails dug into flesh, forcing away the touch of thread. There was a bit of shifting, but then she was lying on his coat, cool leather like more skin under her back, soft as the thighs that brushed hers. She relaxed, eyes closed, relishing the sweetness of this darkness, the cool movement of the air across her skin and through her lungs, so unlike that under the ground. As her nails withdrew from his skin, Spike took his cue, moving down her body so more of the cool air could reach it, kissing every bone and curve he met on his way.

When he nipped at her thighs, underwear gone south, she let him in, pushing the sofa aside so she could lift her hips and lotus her legs round his shoulders. Books dislodged in their piles and tumbled, but she didn’t care, free for once in this unconstrictive darkness. He kissed her; her muscles clenched, kissing back and declaring war in earnest as his tongue entered the fray. The coolness of the night was soon gone, but the air still eddied over her skin; she could hear the AC whirring, distant on the wall, but she was whirring too – alive now. So alive. Her breath hitched, clit sucked and released, and sweat flushed her body, blooming the jasmine scent of her deodorant onto the next breath that came, crisp and pure through the last of the burger grease.

It was that that made her let go, let him take control of her completely, everything inside her blank and dark and soft and black.

She was safe like this, safe enough to pull his head up afterwards and kiss him soundlessly, feed the feeling back to him. Safe enough to whisper, “Spike…” and admit it was he who was there. Safe enough to fuck him for the hundredth time, sharing murmurs with her cheek pressed to his. And again.

* * *

It was so easy, climbing back into the sofa, frenching Spike goodnight with loose-limbed camaraderie before dozing off to the sensation of him sucking on her fingers. So easy that it shouldn’t have felt quite this shameful to wake up, arm dead where it hung and thighs unavoidably sticky. It was the feeling of flesh that Buffy wanted free from her fingers this time, skin and blood not thread, and she felt sick that she’d caused pain and liked it. Just like the Slayer Spike had always wanted, she was the killer who gorged on flesh, whose mouth shaped words of hate and lust and filth, riding death hard beneath her.

Wesley was by the kitchen when she woke, arms crossed as he said, “Good afternoon.”

Staring at him, she could only try to keep the tears back under her eyes, because he clearly knew. He had to know. “What time is it?” she whispered.

He told her and she knew: only forty-seven hours left. Then he added, “My earplugs made me sleep through the alarm.” Spike was awake now too, she could tell from the way he shifted like a serpent (she shouldn’t have been able to tell), but he was only going to listen, not open his eyes. “I really don’t have the energy to care what you and Spike do, but I would appreciate more social behaviour, should you stay here again. Now – I’m going to get us some lunch. Be dressed when I’m back.”

Even as Wesley left she couldn’t say anything, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Spike stood up when Wesley had gone, naked and strange in the plain daylight of the room; he looked at her with eyes soft enough for her to hate him more, but seemed to get the message when she turned her head away, heading off to the shower on his own, clothes in hand.

Time passed with the white of the ceiling. She thought back to the morning.

 

_There were certain realities, after all, that came with doing Spike on someone else’s floor. You actually really couldn’t leave the mess how it fell, not if you wanted to be in any way discreet, so when the blue light of dawn started edging from the kitchen they got up and tried to put things back the way they were meant to be._

_“What the bloody hell does he need all these for, anyway?” Spike whispered, sinfully cross-legged as he stacked books behind the sofa. He seemed to think clothes were unnecessary, since he’d just have to take them off again, and while Buffy agreed to a point (her shirt, jeans and socks were still folded by her bag and jacket at the couch’s side), it made the whole affair seem too much like a sex game for her liking._

_Especially since she was the one lying flat on the floor, stretching for the paperback lost under the side cabinet, helpless as Spike checked out the cotton on her ass. Still, all she said was, “Not a clue,” before smiling with success as her fingers brushed the slick cover. Retrieving the book, she read, “An Introduction to Vampire Prophecies – Gad’Hoffryn Denfrek. Arashmaharr Castle Press. Huh.”_

_“Vampire prophecies?” Spike asked, eyebrow cocked. “They’ll all be about the great souled one, I suppose.”_

 

“For a disgrace, his digs aren’t half bad.”

Suddenly, Spike was back, looking exactly the same, but dressed and radiating warmth like a mockery of a human being. He had warm eyes and he was coming closer, but she had nowhere to run, no way of leaving, no way of avoiding how easy the morning had been. She escaped into words, said, “I hate you.”

But he just sat on the floor by her side, leaning against cushions. “You hate everything,” he reminded her. “Don’t see how _saying_ it to me makes it special.”

Silently Buffy watched the side of his head, as it turned to look at his coat, then back as his lips closed around a retrieved cigarette, sucking in more warmth. “It’s different,” she promised, as he breathed a plume of smoke into the room, letting it mingle with the smell of sex. That he would dare… “I _really_ hate you.”

“Nah,” he replied, before taking another drag, raising a knee to his chest. “That’s not it. Thing that’s different with me, Slayer –” He threw a smile over his shoulder then, wry and a little bit sad. “– thing you haven’t yet figured out, is that you can hate me as much as you want, but sometimes? You can’t help but like me all the same.”

Her stomach clenched – because she hated him, she really did. She wanted to knock the smirk off his face and beat him to the floor, could see herself doing it in her mind. The fact that her fantasy had him laugh at her, take every blow without a mark then grab her fist and kiss it through the pain – that could only be her mind playing tricks, like it always did. “I will solve this,” she promised, more to herself than him. “Wesley knows the spell and he’ll fix this; then I’ll be right again.” Whatever else Wesley was working, whatever Angel was keeping from her, it didn’t matter. She would figure all this out and then she would go home, get back to how she’d been before. She’d sleep through her nights and wake up the way she fell asleep.

“One step at a time, love,” Spike said, still smoking and not sounding convinced. “Best take a shower first, though, yeah? You always feel better when you’re not crusted up.”

Not knowing how to respond, Buffy kicked him in the head, making him duck and curse as she climbed off the couch. Then she picked up her bag and clothes, walking to the bathroom with the blanket wrapped high around her chest.

In the shower, which ran hot, she couldn’t look at her body, only squirt Wesley’s manly shower gel onto the washcloth and scrub until she was certain nothing remained but skin. Her hair needed washing, so she did that too, shampooing until all the grease had gone and the strands felt rough even beneath the water. Coming out, she hated herself for being the woman with a pouch of supplies, but she was: she had an extra pair of boy briefs, the sample stick of Degree they’d been giving out at the mall (Dawn had brought home nine of them), make-up for the final touch. She could get ready almost like a normal morning – and yet she still found herself sitting on the toilet lid, dressed in jeans and a bra but staring at the t-shirt in her hands, unable to pull it over her head.

The thing was, she hated putting on yesterday’s clothes. Maybe she’d taken off the tee where Spike couldn’t watch and maybe she’d swapped it for her Doublemeat shirt pretty early in the morning, but she’d still put it on for a day she wished she hadn’t lived. Today was supposed to be better, supposed to be about moving forward, but she didn’t know how she could do that if she started off in the same place.

Why was she always left holding things in her hands?

 

_Buffy shrugged at Spike’s comment, sitting upright and pulling her bra back into place. There was a firm crease on the book’s spine, so when she thumbed it open two halves fell flat, presenting her with the end of a chapter and a short bibliography. The book list had been marked up with a pencil, some titles crossed out and others starred, one with the scribbled comment, ‘see Gaskell’, in what Buffy could only assume was Wesley’s handwriting. “What d’you make of this?” she asked Spike, handing the book over._

_He frowned at it, before flicking back a few pages, scanning the text. “It’s a chapter on vampires and children,” he said. “Bit of stuff on the Annoying One…” That brought a snort. “What a joke, rumoured the Slayer killed him. That was bloody me! Otherwise… Teenagers – slayers again – pre-pubescents, babies. Aha. Watcher seems to like that paragraph.”_

_“Babies?” she asked, stomach sinking. On Spike’s nod she added, “Angel has a baby. Or, I mean, he’s looking after a baby…” Huh; she really didn’t ask about that situation as much as she should have. “His mother died, or something.”_

_“Hmm,” he replied, frown not shifting as he read, “It is generally accepted that vampires cannot parent offspring through human sexual processes… Who wrote this thing? Humans don’t have a clue!” He laughed, but then that died. “This conclusion, however, inductively reasoned, is not a proven impossibility. Several prophetic traditions discuss infants in relation to vampires – and a significant proportion of these suggest biological rather than metahaemic relationships…” Spike’s eyes met hers. “Not sure I like the sound of that.”_

_“Me neither,” Buffy agreed, the whole world sinking. Someone else had secrets here. Wesley, maybe Angel, they were both as bad as her, not giving away the whole picture. How were they supposed to help her if they were the same? What was she even doing here?_

 

“Buffy?” There was Spike again, calling for her like always, just outside the door. He knocked. “You all right in there? Watcher’s back and you’re setting a record…”

Time. It was hard to control. She didn’t have a watch, but she needed to know when to get back to work – she had to get ready, get the day done. Maybe today wouldn’t change, but she could try again tomorrow.

Spike entered just as she pulled the shirt over her head. “I’m fine,” she said, not sure how her hair looked, short but unstraightened. Raising her chin and standing awkwardly, she told him in the doorway, “You need to leave me alone.”

“I’ll do that when you dust me,” he said, striding across the tile and spinning the shirt front-to-front before she had a chance to put her arms through the sleeves. “Not before.” He didn’t interfere as she finished covering herself, self-conscious as a weird sense of intimacy began to fill the air.

“Seriously?” Buffy replied, flustered as she stepped around him, pulling the shirt over lower her stomach. “You thought _now_ was the time for true confessions?” His eyes followed her as she grabbed a brush from the sink, dragging it through her tangled hair. “I don’t need you, Spike,” Buffy told the mirror, cloudy with only the shadow of her. “I don’t need anyone. I just need to get on with my life, without anyone else…”

“Getting in the way?” Spike suggested, amused. “Some life you’re heading for, there.”

“Shut up.” He didn’t understand. If things would only – stop, for just a moment, then she’d get everything back together. Things would slot into place and she would have exactly the right amount of time for herself, for her friends, for her sister, for Spike, even, maybe – though that would be five minutes of insults and punching halfway through patrol. That was all she’d ever needed before; there was no reason why it had expanded to hours and hours at a time. She was slightly out of phase with this dimension, she was sure that was what the spell had done, and it had distorted innuendo and knuckles on his nose to full-blown sex and her mind hitting always on his face.

“One day you’ll stop fighting and realise that we’re good at this, you and me.”

She ignored him and they seemed to reach a stalemate after that. It was only broken by Wesley, as was becoming a habit, when his voice came corralling from his bedroom. It was possibly gentler than before he’d gone out. “I hesitate to suggest that the salad’s getting cold,” he said. “But if you two are finished, well, time’s moving on.”

Great, Buffy thought. He’d probably heard it all. She used to be better at this ‘secret’ thing.


	2. Flip the Beef, Hit the Other Button

The hotel was bustling when they arrived in Wesley’s SUV, forty-five hours left to go. Ironically distracted, Wesley commented, “I work best without distractions,” as they walked through the door, which left Buffy standing uselessly amongst the busy. A man and a woman she didn’t know were taking weapons from a shiny cabinet, chatting in the cadences of couple’s banter, while Angel was talking seriously with another woman in the centre of the floor, who looked like she was leaving from the way she held her bag. You could tell they were engrossed in what they were doing: Spike was stamping on his smoking coat by her side, an obvious vampire giveaway, and he still wasn’t attracting attention.

But then, before Buffy had got her act together – “Who are _they_?” the woman talking with Angel asked pointedly. With cropped hair and a fair brown complexion, Buffy didn’t recognise her, but the way she was standing was more important. It projected an artful sort of vulnerability, checking a box in Buffy’s mind: monitor with suspicion. Also? Make her introduce herself first. And so Buffy waited, only for the woman not to offer anything. Instead she asked Angel, the question close on the heels of her last, “And why is that guy’s jacket on fire?”

Unfortunately, what with the monitoring, Spike replied before Buffy could hit him. “What, this?” he said, picking up the coat and swinging it back on. “Had a nasty run in with some angled glass.” With his tongue stuck against his teeth, it seemed to Buffy like he was daring the woman to disagree rather than trying to convince her it was true. He mourned, “It’s a terrible thing, the California sun – specially for blokes with my…”

“Ignore him,” Angel growled, apparently wanting Spike’s status kept a secret but not actually looking surprised he was there.

Buffy could see Spike getting ready for a fight, his eyes flashing as he bounced on his toes – and so she shoved him forward, farther into the room. “Seriously,” she said at last, as Spike scowled at her. Testing was fine, she tried to tell him, but messing up Angel’s operation was not. “He’s just obsessed with making an entrance.”

Apparently picking up on the reprimand, but ignoring the request of silence, Spike smirked at her, changing the subject to his favourite. “Well, when you put it like that, pet…”

“OK!” the guy with the axe interrupted, stepping away from the wall and sizing them both up. “I think I repeat what the lady asked. Who the hell are you?”

Bristling at the tone and surprised at the new hostility, Buffy was happy to turn away from Spike and stare the axe guy down. Spike turned with her; she didn’t even care that they were closing ranks.

However, before anything could get started, Angel quickly said, “It’s all right, Gunn, they’re here to see… Well, I think they’re with Wes, actually, but I know the both of them. Fred, Gunn; this is Buffy and – Spike.” He finished with a warning, “They aren’t here to cause trouble.”

That, unfortunately, resulted in one of those awful moments of synchronicity Buffy wished would stop happening, because no way were she and Spike on the same wavelength: they snorted simultaneously, with her saying, “Him? I wouldn’t count on it,” just as he said, “Speak for yourself, mate.”

Awkward silence followed. Fred filled it. “Aww…” she said. “They’re cute!” Buffy glared, but then the woman seemed to recognise her, which was all the more worrying. “Hang on. _Buffy_ Buffy? Aren’t you…?” She frowned, looking between Buffy and Spike, who was glaring too, and then over to Angel, who fidgeted uncomfortably.

 _What the hell have you told them about me?_ Buffy wanted to ask, though she settled for more glaring. At Angel.

“Well, I’ve gotta go,” the first woman said, drawing attention back to her – although, she looked remarkably unoffended by being skipped over in the introductions. “But – thank you,” she told Angel and his gang, smiling earnestly before leaving the hotel to various reassurances (about the pier?).

“We should get going too, shouldn’t we, Charles?” Fred then said to Gunn, before turning to Buffy and Spike and smiling obliviously. “It was really nice to meet y’all; we can do introductions when we get back, right?” And then they were gone too, saying something mission-related to Angel before heading out of the door.

And then it was just the three of them. The silence was pronounced.

“Is Cordelia here somewhere?” Buffy asked at last. “I expected Cordelia.” As much as she hadn’t been looking forward to that, she liked known quantities way more than the un-. Those were tiring.

“Cordy’s on holiday,” Angel said, telling her nothing – apart from that Cordelia had an exciting LA nickname. Then he sighed, frowning deeply as he changed the subject. “Look, Wes told me I have to be the adult here.”

Spike snorted, interjecting, “You?”

She would have stomped on his foot, but, actually, she was as suspicious as he was. It seemed pretty obvious that she’d been sold as Angel’s ex, committed enough that she was meant to be out of tune with any other male-type guy she appeared with (and, yes, her indignation there was stronger than her annoyance about the Spike-syncing). More than that, though, this MO really wasn’t one that Buffy recognised and, also, if Wesley had talked to Angel, then…

Angel knew.

Her eyes shot to his. Oh, crap. She could see it in the way Angel stood, the way he frowned. Her first and greatest love, with whom she had nevertheless spent only one night of tentative virginery, who’d left her for humans and picnics and sunshine – he knew she was fucking a soulless vampire. One he’d always kind of hated anyway.

And yet… He wasn’t saying anything, just looked pained.

Was she really that disgusting? “Don’t you have anything to say?” Buffy asked, feeling weak, crossing her arms instinctively. The marks and stains on her skin were making themselves known, burning as spots of forgettable but suddenly consequential pain; she couldn’t bear it.

Spike tried to cut in, “Hey, Slayer –” but Angel growled, the sound full of menace; she heard Spike step back in surprise, which was gratifying. There had to be someone else who could keep him in line.

Then, however, Angel answered her question. “No,” he said quite grudgingly, but serious. “It’s ‘none of my business’.” OK, Wesley really had told him – and convinced him to be reasonable, which was… Beyond strange. Even if Angel did sulk, “I thought you were only – you know – patrolling or something.”

Buffy frowned, pulling the strength together to respond, but that was when Angel’s eyes slid away, his head ducking. Seriously; whatever hold Wesley had on him, she realised, it was big. He finished, “I’m gonna show Connor his new things,” and after that he was gone, cooing at the baby in the bassinet before taking him upstairs, boots pounding the whole flight.

She watched Angel walk away, starting to shake, but of course Spike had to fill the silence in the worst way possible. “Well,” he said, preening with a cluck of his tongue. “Some blokes just know when they don’t measure up.”

“Shut the fuck up, Spike,” she replied, delayed fear juddering through her bones.

Not that that stopped him responding in kind. “Fucking make me, Slayer,” he said with a snort.

Buffy shook her head. “Don’t start.”

“Don’t _start_?” Grabbing her arm, he turned her to face him, looking almost actually insulted. He always picked the worst times, and now wasn’t an exception. Could he not leave _anything_ alone? “What does it take, Buffy,” he asked, “for you to talk to me like I’m real? For you to have a joke with me when we’re not the only ones in the room?”

“What the hell’s that got to do with anything?” she shot back defensively, her brain still working through the conversation. Couldn’t he be grateful? Didn’t he see how much worse things could have gone? They could have been thrown out into the sunshine, sent back to Sunnydale without answers or anything. Angel could have sworn to tell all her friends; he had the power to judge, the right of a champion behind him; he could have confirmed all her worst fears of failure.

Spike’s jaw clenched as he looked away from her, eyes glancing to the sunlight outside and to the stairs up which Angel had fled. “You don’t have to pretend here,” he insisted. “None of them give a toss – even _Angel_ knows he shouldn’t want to. Apart from him and that Wesley, who is there who knows you? No one.” He snarled, looking back at her, “You don’t have to treat me by the Scoobies’ rules.”

“They’re _my_ rules,” Buffy said roughly, pulling her arm out of his hand and getting angry. How slow on the uptake could he be? “I need rules.” From his face she could tell Spike was holding last night against her, like that was the truth and this was the lie. But it was the other way around; it _had_ to be. “When I break rules, people die. You can’t understand –”

“I can’t _understand_?” he cut her off, sounding like he was bringing up all the surliness since they’d got up, the way she’d crumpled under Angel’s scrutiny, getting way out of hand. He laughed, dry and harsh, turned away – but then he shot back, deadly serious. “You listen to me, now, Buffy, ‘cause there’s a lot of things I _don’t_ understand about you, but for the last two years the one and only rule I’ve allowed in my life – for _over a century_ – is not to let people die.” His jaw clenched. “So don’t you dare say I can’t understand. I know how high you hold that, bloody rebel that you are when the whole sodding species values most life at fuck all. Falling for you… It’s _you_ who can’t know what you’ve done to me, making me stop, making me think –”

“And you’re _my_ responsibility!” she yelled over him, because he didn’t understand, couldn’t know the compass he didn’t have. “Do you even realise? Every moment I don’t stake you, you’re my responsibility.” His eyes were hard, harder than she could keep hers. “And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m flunking those more every day.”

“ _How_?” Spike shook his head. “How are you –”

Buffy cut him off, turning away. “You have to stay a duty, not a care. Those – they get done.”

“If you’re gonna say that,” he snapped, steps scuffing, “bloody _look_ at me!” And he pushed her, two hands on shoulders, forcing her round so she was stumbling backwards, eyes flicking up to take in his angry face. She recovered, but he was still coming, not understanding at all, so with two turning steps and a kick she roundhoused him away from her, making his body fly ten feet across the lobby.

Spike crashed to the floor, bones cracking on the marble.

She waited, heart pumping with the last of the adrenaline, expecting him to get up and rush her again.

Seconds passed, but he didn’t get up, didn’t move. A dozen fantasy fights went through her mind every day, but none of them were like this: he always got up, he always laughed, he always loved it. Where had she gone wrong? That shouldn’t have sent him unconscious, not that kick.

Buffy couldn’t help but panic. Rationally, she knew she shouldn’t care, because it wasn’t right to care and it didn’t matter with him a vampire anyway, but her muscles weren’t rational: her feet were carrying her towards him now and her voice quavered as she said, “Spike…?”

When she leant over him he looked dead; her heart stopped –

– but only until his eyes snapped open, as his boots met her chest on his flip up to standing. Before she could recover, he rushed her against the wall, trapping her in with his hands on her upper arms.

“Tell me you don’t care,” he demanded, eyes blazing as he took in her panic. “Bloody _tell me_.”

She shouted back on instinct, face twisting beyond her control, “I don’t love you!” The words echoed round the lobby, rough and blurred and worryingly close to saying something else. Spike froze, but she carried on. “What are you gonna do? Beat me till I say different?”

He snarled on a delay, “That wasn’t the fucking question!” But then he caught up, so shoved her one more time before retreating, hands pressed to his eyes, apparently realising the plan was a bust. After a moment of silence, he told her bitterly, “You do my head in, Slayer.”

With his words, she heard it again, the sound of his head slamming into the floor. Her blood hadn’t cooled, so she couldn’t help but feel a dirty sort of pride that he’d been able to get back up, despite everything. The words slipped from her tongue: “You underestimate yourself.”

She didn’t even know what she meant, but it had him looking at her again, eyes disbelieving but his lips pursed in a promise she was turning him on. “I think you’ll find that’s mutual,” he said, just holding her in his gaze.

There was nowhere to go after that. She had nothing to say.

In the end, Spike sighed and reached out his hand for hers, not so much with entreaty as disdain. The contrary thing seemed to be to accept his grip, so she took it, stepping away from the wall.

With his fingers gently pulling at her, thumb across the back of her palm, Buffy found herself where she was that morning, a soft and strange warmth flushing through her in the wake of her dissipating anger. She hated everything in this world, herself most of all and the hollow wreck of shame and confusion she was, so there was nothing else to feel for him but hate – and yet he was different, when they were like this he was different, and she didn’t understand that different shade of feeling. Spike wasn’t like Dawn, whom she hated so little she simply felt nothing at all; she didn’t know what she felt about him.

Following his footsteps, Buffy found herself on the couch where she’d sat with Angel the night before, but closer to the body at her side, leaning in as an arm came around her shoulders and looking at nothing. What was the point in resisting, really, when there was no one around to care?

In the silence she wanted to ask Spike how it felt to fall in love with her – but she knew that to ask that would be to admit it had happened. So instead she wondered idly, because she had idle thoughts and most of them were dismissibly crazy, whether it felt anything like this.

Because, when she looked at him these days, she saw him like she saw nothing else, like he was cast in negative against the colour system of the world. He was different. From her friends, from her enemies, from herself; he had no secrets, no shame, no fear. He tried so goddamn hard and that – it made her realise how much she hated everything else a whole lot more than she did him. He was terrifying, but above all else he was _necessary_ , if only as a truth she tried to ignore. If only as the one who made her know things were wrong.

Like, even now, sitting in Angel’s seat, he was kissing her hair as if he didn’t care how angry it might make Angel – or _her_ – as if he cared more about the chance she might like it. What could you do to someone with that sort of nerve? She couldn’t bring herself to push him away; what could you do with someone who made you realise that?

“D’you think anybody heard?” she asked instead.

Spike just shrugged, which had the effect of rocking her ever so slightly closer against him. Bastard. “Who cares?” he asked nonchalantly. “We probably gave that bint a good show.”

OK, now she was just confused.

“Huh?” Buffy asked. _I do not say ‘bint’._ “There’s a woman?”

“The one from before, with the questions and the Karate Kid foot stance,” he said, as if she should know exactly what he was talking about. “Doubt she left straightaway. She knew exactly what I was but didn’t want to say so: blatantly here on a reccy.”

Then she got it, the suspicious check-box woman – was probably still here? Dammit, she should have trusted her instincts. “And you didn’t say anything?” she asked, shrugging off Spike’s arm and leaning forward on the couch. “She’s probably a bad guy – Angel probably has bad guys, and traps, and…”

Spike really wasn’t getting it, just staring at her like they weren’t speaking the same language. Not that she could be sure they did, most of the time. “So?” he asked.

“ _So_ we don’t let that happen to our friends,” she told him sharply, before remembering with a pang that she was the one who’d scowled him into silence. Double dammit.

Standing up and looking quickly around the hotel, Buffy realised there wasn’t anybody she could tell about this. (Why did everyone have to be so busy and/or flammable?) And she’d just told Spike they couldn’t let it go, so presumably it was her problem now. “Wait here,” she told him, exasperated but letting some mildness return.

He sighed, looking put out as he grumbled, “And off she goes a-heroing,” nevertheless keeping his eyes locked on hers until she turned away.

* * *

Of course, when Buffy left the hotel she had no idea where she was going. But every now and then – when it was to someone else’s benefit – she got lucky, so, stealthing down the street, she actually managed to catch the woman just as she was heading into nearest subway station. If she really had left the hotel when she’d seemed to, the woman shouldn’t have taken this long to get there. Sure, maybe she’d stopped for some falafel or bought a magazine, but she could just as easily have been watching. As far as Buffy was concerned, the decision was made: tailing was the prudent choice.

Having spent her fifty cents on the phone call to Wesley and used her last favour for the bus, Buffy didn’t have the money for a ticket – but she headed down the stairs anyway. It wasn’t like she’d forgotten how to dodge the barriers; it was even easier with Slayer reflexes, more so when she wasn’t attracting attention in a giggling gang of fourteen year olds. She had to remind herself this was Slayer business when the guilt came creeping in, but otherwise the three-stop journey went without incident, bringing the woman and Buffy to a reasonably short walk and a shady-looking mansion. Possibly the woman lived there, but Buffy chose to suspect.

Wishing she had some dark glasses and a hat, Buffy snuck around the side of the house to a dust-darkened window, kneeling in a weedy flowerbed to look inside.

Definitely a bad guy, she decided, peering in. The woman had come home to a motley group of people in a gloomy, badly decorated living room and, after receiving what looked like a jovial piece of congratulation, she took a camera out of her bag, handing it to someone with a laptop. Despite this damning evidence, however, Buffy couldn’t quite figure out what the set-up was, bad-guy-ish though it seemed. The more she watched, the further it became clear that this didn’t resemble any evil cult she’d known – there were no robes, no demonic statues, no funky herb repositories. And the people all looked so… Human.

Although – was that a demon? Something man-shaped, but with bad hair, materialised at the edge of the chatting group. A short guy who walked like he was in a costume drama led him away to some books, where they gestured emphatically for a few moments, before the demon-thing vanished again. Huh.

Buffy watched the goings on for a while, as the pictures were printed and the hotel woman debriefed the rest of the group; no more demons appeared. The costume drama guy definitely looked like he was in charge, and a chick with a big-ass belt buckle was his second in command. Obviously they had some sort of plan, but it didn’t seem to be coming into action quite yet, at least not in any way she could see. And whatever that meant, there wasn’t anything Buffy could do about it now. Angel would probably know who these people were, so the best thing to do would be to get back to the hotel, tell him, then ask if she should head down to the pier or something to warn his friends there. Maybe check how Wesley’s research was progressing. Not think about snuggling under Spike’s arm.

Unfortunately, like all of Buffy’s recon plans, it didn’t go the way it was meant to. There was a reason she usually went for the mount-up-and-charge approach.

When she passed by the front path again, having got up awkwardly and rubbed dirt from her knees (way too much like a cemetery-sex stain), the house’s front door opened. It revealed the costume drama guy, who stepped out and said, in costume drama British, “Are you going so soon?”

Nonplussed, Buffy looked back at him, eyes wide as she wondered how cowardly it would be to run away. What exactly was she supposed to do with this man?

“Come now,” he continued, gesturing towards the doorway but not issuing an invitation. Smart. “You must know so much about us, while we know so little about you.” For some reason, when he said it like that, it sounded like she was being really impolite. She thought it was probably the British. “You’ll be quite safe. After all –” He looked up, shielding his eyes from LA’s afternoon sun, before saying, “Our cause is against vampires, so you have nothing to fear.”

If they were human and had no magic, she had nothing to fear from them in any case, but he didn’t have to know that. “But you know I hang out with them,” Buffy replied as a challenge, not moving from the street. “Vampires, I mean.”

The man smiled, calculating. “And yet you carry a stake in your boot and two more inside your jacket. You stand as someone to whom combat is no stranger, yet you observed instead of attacked.” He deduced, “I believe we are on the same side – and it is always a pleasure to meet a comrade.”

OK, he got extra points for noticing the stakes. But she’d met freelancers before, and, while this one had a Watcher-like accent and more charm than the wolf guy, she was still wary. “I’m not your comrade,” she told him. “I’m not a soldier.” What was she? Oh yeah, a human warrior dead from mystical means. Only alive. Wrong.

“Perhaps not,” he replied agreeably. “But I believe we should speak anyway.”

When it came down to it, Buffy wasn’t sure if this could actually go that badly. She knew practically nothing about Angel’s situation these days – certainly not more than the woman had already found out – so she probably had nothing to give this guy, while she had everything to learn from talking to him. The house had a lot of windows; she could find a way out if she got into trouble.

“Fine,” she said at last, making her way up the path. “But you’d better offer me tea.”

The man laughed, in that smile-and-exhale way Giles had always been fond of. “All in good time,” he replied as she followed him inside. “And my name, by the way, is Captain Daniel Holtz.”

The introduction hung expectantly, even as she took in all the faces of people watching her. She thought about calling herself Joan, but, when it came down to it, as much as she had to hide she didn’t care to show a weakness like that, not when any vampire hunter worth their salt should know her face. “Buffy Summers,” she said – and could immediately tell the best fighters in the room from the ones who didn’t laugh.

Daniel didn’t even crack a grin. He nodded, showing her to the seating area where she watched everyone sit just minutes before – where, huh, there was a photo of her with ‘Fi(?)’ written underneath it. The belt buckle chick (who’d only broken a small smile) sat with them, while Daniel he asked the woman from the hotel, “Aubrey, considering our guest, would you mind making some tea for us all?”

“Sure,” the woman, Aubrey, replied, apparently quite nice even when she wasn’t faking. “Hot tea, right?”

“Yes.” Daniel nodded as she scurried away. Then he turned back to Buffy and commented, apologetically, “Forgive me, but I am not fond of the sugar customary in the ‘iced’ version of the drink. My tastes are rather traditional.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, mostly surprised there hadn’t been more specifics. “I’ve known a few ol-, um, _traditional_ British guys in my time.”

He raised his eyebrows, nodding as if in understanding, before turning his head towards the other woman. When Buffy looked her way too, he introduced her, “This is Justine Cooper –”

However, just as he was saying this, and quicker than a normal human would have noticed, Daniel took a ball point pen in his hand and threw it at Buffy like a dart, aiming for her neck. She, of course, took it out of the air easily, fingers closing around the plastic – it hadn’t been flying that fast and would have caused her more of a surprise than a wound, but she spun back to face him anyway, _not_ appreciating the test. “What the _hell_ was that?” Buffy demanded.

“As I thought,” Daniel commented, unconcerned, as though this was simply a further part of their introduction; Justine looked just as confused as Buffy felt, so this apparently wasn’t any sort of major set-up with a poisoned pen or something. “I always hoped I would know the Vampire Slayer should I meet her.” He bowed his head. “It is an honour.”

“Really?” Buffy asked, still on edge but not averse to the flattery. What was a little pen-throwing between friends? Clearly Daniel knew his stuff, and his tone was respectful, almost deferent; it was weird how nice a change it actually made for somebody to recognise her. “Did you not expect me to be, I dunno, taller or something?”

He frowned. “I was aware you would be a woman, and have known many women of your stature. Or slighter: my beloved Caroline…”

Then his explanation slackened, words coming to a ragged halt. It all began slotting into place – possibly this guy had skills and throwing reflexes that came from more than a few years experience, but setting up out of an abandoned mansion with a gang of henchpeople-in-training? Daniel had a mission. And, in her experience, where there was a mission, there was, well, death.

“Was it vampires…?” Buffy began, hesitantly. “Did vampires kill – ?”

He focused on her again, hate clouding his expression. “Angelus _murdered_ my wife and family.”

Shocked, she froze in her chair. “ _Angelus_?” Daniel was in his, what, late forties, early fifties? “How – ? Are you from Sunnydale?” Oh god, was this her fault? How long would it be before she stopped meeting the fallout from that one mistake? How long till she stopped deserving to? “I feel like I would have…”

“You are acquainted with his history, then?” the man responded, looking satisfied but apparently not knowing or realising that she _was_ Angel’s history. “Yes, the soul has been present for a hundred years. I imagine it won’t be kept from you, when you return to him with my location, that I am not from that century, nor the one preceding. The crime, however, remains.” So he actually _was_ from a costume drama…

Taken aback by Daniel’s bizarre revelation, Buffy couldn’t keep eye contact with him, looking instead at all the people bustling around the hideout. Her gaze eventually fell on Justine, who smirked, just a little. Maybe it was funny; stranger things had happened. Maybe. “Are all these people…?” Buffy began.

Justine, however, shook her head, taking pity on her but laughing while she did it. “No,” she said. “We’re from this time – just sympathetic to the cause.”

“The –” Now Buffy paused, staring the woman down, because this _wasn’t_ funny. “This isn’t about vampires,” she realised, a little belatedly, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. This wasn’t a regular anti-vampire group. “This is about Angel. You’re all after Angel.” She glanced at Holtz, who was unreadable, then back to Justine, accusing, “I understand fighting vampires – my god do I understand fighting vampires – and I understand revenge… But you? You’re here because your _sympathetic_? This guy rocks up from the – eighteenth century, with a vendetta and a musket – I bet he had a musket – and you let him…”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” Justine told her coldly, taking Buffy’s full attention.

“And I don’t care,” she replied, hard, even as Aubrey appeared with the tea. That had been kind of a joke anyway; she wasn’t thirsty anymore. “There are no excuses, not when people’s lives are at stake.” Six years on earth Buffy had been living by that credo, and every time she’d tried to change the rules it had bitten her on the ass. In all likelihood this woman did have pain, deep pain that hurt her like a stab wound in her side, every day she got up, every night she went to sleep – but that didn’t change the rules.

“Well said,” Daniel interrupted their stare, pouring the tea for the four of them as Aubrey took her place at the table. “I hope you take that message to heart, Justine. I dare say, Miss Summers,” he continued, lifting his teacup from the tray and holding it before him, steam rising past his face, “that our ethics almost certainly align. You fight evil everyday; you are aware of the responsibilities of judgement and forbearance which follow.” One sip of the tea, which had him frowning like the taste wasn’t all that familiar to him. “I, however, pursued Angelus for a little over seven years – which I imagine is longer than you have been called.”

“About the same, actually,” she interjected, joining Justine in rejecting her cup.

“Commendable,” came the praise again, though it was sitting less and less comfortably. “You know the nature of vampires, I presume, their hearts and will? Well, I know Angelus and the blackness of his heart, the torment it must bring upon that wretched soul of his. I know in the name of God that what I do is right.”

“He told me,” Aubrey added, quietly but with no less conviction as she caught up with the conversation, drinking her tea. “Not knowing who I was, Angelus told me that when a vampire takes a life, all they leave is an evil thing. He admits it.” She sipped, her eyes not showing vulnerability anymore, but zeal, burning. “There was no hope for my son,” she asked Buffy, though she sounded certain of the answer, “How can there be any hope for him?”

She wasn’t going to get it: “Because he’s not the same person!” Buffy wasn’t sure she could believe what she was hearing; neither of the women were listening to her, she could see that in the way they scowled, but she kept speaking anyway. “The soul changed him,” she insisted. “Maybe not straight away, he admits that, but it made him see things differently – he made himself into someone new. And, yeah,” she accepted. “It sucks that Angelus was the one who got that. In a lot of ways that sucks – but life’s _not_ fair, and Angel? He deserves a chance to live.”

“His soul deserves a chance to find salvation,” Daniel replied plainly, dismissing all her passion. “The creature remains an abomination, his choices little different from those I knew so many years ago. He holds a child in his arms, but still he –”

Buffy’s stomach clenched, but she nevertheless interrupted, not wanting to hear what Angel had done, what the baby meant, not from this man. “I can’t listen to any more of this,” she said, standing up and drawing the attention of the others training in the room beyond. “This is a horrible world, and it’s – hard.” So, so hard. “And maybe you’re used to dealing with that by looking around and seeing the saved on the one side and the damned on the other; I get it, you’re old.” She met Daniel’s eyes with what she was sure he was thinking of as New World insolence. She didn’t care. “But thinking that simply does nothing but get innocent people killed. Because – maybe you care about souls, Captain Holtz, but I care about _lives_ , and all I see is you leading a group of frightened, angry people into a massacre. I’m leaving.” Then she looked one last time at Justine and Aubrey, telling them, “You should think about what you’re doing here – whether doing this guy’s work will ever really sate what you feel.”

They said nothing as she left, and she was happy for it to go that way, but on the way out she caught sight of some movement in the corner of her eye, just beyond the group she hadn’t spoken with. There were vampires, she saw, chained up in a group and ravening, with bruises on their demon faces. One was nursing a broken wrist; another was bleeding from a sword wound to the chest.

Pausing, Buffy snorted, then took one of the stakes from her jacket to twirl in her fingers. This place, this mission would fall, she knew it then and there, but there was one last thing to do before she left. Setting one foot in front of the other, she purposefully approached the vampires snarling where they stood. One of the human guys called, “Hey!”, another rushing to stop her – but with a step and a flex of her ankle he was on the ground and tumbling towards the skirting board. The rest backed off.

“You’re a God-fearing man, Daniel,” she said, loudly and clearly in the voice she reserved for these particular moments, looking at nothing but the creatures in chains. “So, you must know.” Coming close to the vamps, they seemed to sense who she was, quietening down and waiting – proof their time was done. She explained, “There’s something far more powerful than vengeance, more frightening, more holy.” With her movements as quick and efficient as she knew, it took less than ten seconds to stake them all; the one with the stab wound was last, his eyes fading from yellow to something human in the gloom before he went. “I mean,” she finished, as the feral screams died and the dust fell to the floor, “you’ve heard of mercy, right?”

Then she was gone, not looking back.

* * *

The late afternoon was warm as she wandered back to the Hyperion. There didn’t seem any reason to skip the subway fare again, not when she knew LA well enough to find her way and had nothing waiting for her but problems. This was how it always went: when she knew what she was doing, things were so easy, and she felt as powerful as she had always done. But things were hard too often; if she could just keep walking, alone with the sun in the sky, she was fairly sure she could live her life.

She got back eventually though, and found Spike reading a book on the couch to the soundtrack of Wesley on the phone. Otherwise, the hotel felt as empty as when she’d left. Maybe it felt more welcoming when Cordelia wasn’t away.

“Big Daddy’s taking a nap,” Spike told her, putting the paperback down on his chest but not getting up. “Some baby book nonsense about ‘sleeping when he does’.”

Buffy sighed. “You haven’t been bothering Angel, have you?” If Spike would just _stop_ making her life harder, she was pretty sure that most of it would fix itself.

“Maybe he bothered me,” he replied, a little sulkily (and worryingly human).

Rolling her eyes, Buffy ignored the look that implied they were supposed to be talking about before. “Is Wesley…?” Thankfully, a concluding rise in tone and the slam of a receiver signalled the end of Wesley’s phone call, so she didn’t have to worry about sustaining the conversation any longer.

Spike made some sort of noise as she left the lobby for Wesley’s office, but he couldn’t seem to work out what to say. That suited her fine.

Letting herself in like the night before, Buffy met Wesley’s eyes and took his nod as invitation to sit down opposite him. “Did you find anything?” she asked, wanting this all to be over and done with.

At first he didn’t say anything, shifting the papers under his hands and seemingly switching gears after the phone call. Then he cleared his throat, before apologising with, “I’m sorry you’ve wasted a trip.”

“What?” she replied shortly, shaking her head, not understanding. “Could you not –”

“No,” he said, finally meeting her eyes. Serious. “What I mean is – as far as I can ascertain, the spell went fine. There’s nothing different about you.”

“No,” she echoed, using his word because she had none of her own. “ _No_.” She was calm, but she was swallowing down bile. The thing was, when he said it, in some ways it felt inevitable. And yet it was impossible – because she _was_ wrong. She knew it, in the marks on her hips that hadn’t been there this time yesterday, in the way that Spike talked to her like they were friends and the way that she talked back. “You’re mistaken,” she told Wesley, because that was the only way this could work.

“It’s a dangerous spell,” he explained, his gentle tone nonetheless cutting. “It should never have been attempted – but, in terms of the subject… For the most part, it’s – foolproof.” _Foolproof._ Like an Easy-Bake Oven. Funny. “It either reanimates the body whole or doesn’t work at all.”

“No,” she swore again, looking down at her hands, which had done so many things. The lines of the wood grain twisted and merged around her fingers as she explained, “Spike can hurt me, so I’m wrong.” Why would no one get the logic? “I’m not human, I’m different.”

“Your body,” Wesley said, making her fists clench, every cell a traitor. “It’s – reconstitution was probably enough to distort any biological censors in Spike’s chip – its magical trace… If the chip really was designed to create weapons,” he suggested, “it may be that that’s what triggers a prevention of feedback against de–”

“Demons?” she interrupted, seizing the word again from the air. It made Wesley jerk back. “If the chip thinks I’m a demon, then I can’t be human, can I?” That explained it, why she could still kill so easily. Everything was so easy in the night, the demons’ world. (Apart from Spike, apart from –)

“No,” the man insisted all the same, getting aggravated now. “You _are_ human. Magically reconstructed, but as human as you were before.”

It was his anger that got to her. She stood, laughing as she saw the truth; she’d had enough of Englishmen today. “How can I even trust you?” she asked, which seemed to surprise him; she was surprising herself. “I know you’re keeping something from me.” Slowly Wesley’s mouth went slack, fingers clutching around his papers, and she knew she was right. The books, the avoidance, Holtz’s words: they all added up to this. She’d been so _stupid_ to come here. “You and Angel, you’re hiding something about that baby. Don’t think I don’t know.”

“ _What_ do you know?” Wesley asked, afraid and standing up fast out of his chair.

But she was already backing away, out of the office, because she knew she wouldn’t get anything more out of him. Spike was still in the lobby, introducing himself to some random green guy, who had a butcher’s paper bag in his arm (why did she know where it came from?), and he met her eyes the moment she was there – but she stalked past him, taking to the stairs like Angel had before.

She couldn’t climb them; darting across the floor, Spike appeared in front of her on the flight. “Get out of my way, Spike,” she told him, glaring with as much violence as she could.

For a moment he said nothing, apparently working out what she’d been told. As he stepped down another stair further into her space, she could see he believed the same as Wesley, that she was human and she wasn’t wrong, which almost made her cry, definitely made her shake, because now everyone was ganging up. It _couldn’t_ be true, didn’t Spike see that? It couldn’t be right for her to want to destroy him, not so very often as she did, to beat him and wound him at the same time as she let him – when a moment later the feeling would vanish away, as it was vanishing now as he brought soft soulless hands to her shoulders. “Don’t,” he told her, shortly but with kind eyes.

She almost didn’t, lips parting without words – but then she heard Wesley coming into the lobby behind her, the purposeful knell of hard-soled shoes. On her arms, Spike’s hands tightened; she said, “Please,” to make him let her go. She couldn’t deal with him now, not his kindness, not his touch, not as her words came out weaker than anything she’d said at Daniel’s.

Reluctantly Spike stepped aside, touch fading with a tight caress. “It’s 312,” he told her as she headed on, sounding disgusted with himself. She was glad someone could be.

Buffy found the room two more flights up, with a rested Angel appearing from the doorway. “Buffy?” he asked, confused.

“Tell me what’s going on,” she begged, trying to demand. “Don’t lie to me – you can’t, not when you know everything I’ve done.”

“What’s wrong?” Angel asked, still confused – but purposefully blocking the doorway, it seemed to Buffy, keeping the baby from her. “Did Spike –”

“Don’t say his name!” Her voice rose to a shriek, just for a syllable; she was surprised to hear Angel say it, didn’t want him saying it. “This isn’t about him.” _Why was it always about him?_ “This is about _me_.” Before, in the house, she’d had so much control, but here her speech was breaking down, her conviction and her self-belief. Why couldn’t everything be as she knew it was? She forced herself to carry on, begging now with words “You know I’m wrong, don’t you – but you won’t say it. You won’t let Wesley fix it.” The reason why hit her afresh, slammed into her lungs. “You’re holding it back because of that – baby.” She pointed at the room, at Angel’s chest. “Because of…”

“My son?” Angel suggested, making everything real.

She stared. And then her arm slumped to her side. _My son._

“Connor?” Angel asked, still urgent. “What about him? What did Wes say?”

She shook her head, her mouth dry, her head spinning; was it not a secret? It had to be a secret. “He didn’t say anything.”

“Then why are you so upset?” The question came from far away; she was staring at the floor.

“He said…” Buffy didn’t finish, asked instead, “Your _son_? How…?” She wasn’t sure what she had thought, what else she could have thought, in light of the evidence, but it was still enough to make her brain go cold. “And not adopted, I guess.” She looked up.

Angel sighed, easing away from the doorway and inviting her in. “Come meet Connor, Buffy, I’ll introduce you.”

It was easier than thinking about anything else – distraction, that was good – and so she followed him inside the room, trudging in her boots across the carpet. Angel brought her to the side of the cot and she looked down, at the bundle of blankets and life, sleeping peacefully in the multicoloured glow of his nightlight.

“Buffy,” Angel said softly, “this is Connor.”

And there he was.

The boy was beautiful. She could see that, in the soft ruddiness of his cheeks and the tiny spot of his nose; he was fragile and breakable and perfect, he was everything she shouldn’t be allowed near. Hadn’t she told Angel the Giga Pet story? “Who was his mother?” Buffy asked softly, probably proving how hard she was, but nonetheless needing the answer. “I’m guessing you didn’t actually lie, so – was she close to you?”

Sighing again, Angel said nothing at first, but she didn’t push him – just watched the colours on the nightlight change from blue to green, to yellow, to orange, red, purple, stars falling on Connor’s pudgy face. She realised, quite suddenly, that this had to be the goodness Angel had been talking about, that he’d been so goshdarn pleased with. She didn’t want to know the badness that Daniel saw.

“I guess you could say I made some bad choices too,” Angel said eventually, inevitably making her heart sink. “Worse, maybe. Or certainly, since the baddest thing Spike does these days is backchat.”

 _And steal and gamble and drink and smoke…_ “You think that isn’t bad?” she asked, back on topic, not sure whether he was joking – and what that meant for what he’d done. “You think that’s all of it? He – he undermines my friends, gets me to talk about them behind their backs – to the point I start to wonder whether I even like them anymore…”

“ _Do_ you?” Angel asked mildly, catching her eye.

She hesitated, before retreating from the cot and saying, “That’s not a fair question to ask.”

“Buffy.” Turning around, Angel crossed his arms over his chest and kept his distance, which was just about enough to stop her leaving. He looked serious, as if he’d figured what Wesley had told her. Apparently everybody could believe it but her. “When we met up, after you – I could barely get through to you. Do you remember sitting in that diner, the silence while we ate?”

If she thought back, she could, just about. Sort of. Those first few weeks were slightly confused. Time wasn’t her friend (what time was it now?); it was all part of the wrongness. She didn’t say that, though, just, “I had cherry pie, right?”

“Right,” Angel replied, though it came with a frown. “My point is, they put you through a lot. And, I guess, it doesn’t seem to me like you have to be OK with everything all at once.” He gestured between them. “Talking to you now, I recognise so much more of the girl I knew than that shadow with her pie.”

She laughed shortly, so bright and brittle she was worried she’d wake Connor. Recognised her. He thought he _recognised_ her. “Then you’re not looking very hard,” she told him – because she was wrong. Whatever the magic said, she could feel it. Everything was twisted and inverted inside her. “There’s nothing about me that’s the same as what I was.” Desperately she tried to describe it, “I try and I try and I try, but it – everything means nothing to me. My friends, maybe I feel – but Spike and I… I go to him because he makes me _forget_. About everything.” Oh, she could feel it all coming back – the Doublemeat and the bills and the debt she didn’t even open, sucking her in. Now, an hour’s walk away, she remembered what it was like to be Justine and just want an out, but – “That’s wrong. I know it’s wrong, and still…” _Why, Spike, why is it you’re allowed to make me happy?_ “The things he does, the things he _says_ , the things I say to _him_ – it’s wrong, it’s all wrong.” She shook her head again, looking up at Angel. “You have to understand. We’re – awful.”

Angel’s eyes were dark, unyielding. “Let me guess,” he finished knowingly, not knowing anything, “apart from when you aren’t, right?”

What could she say to that? Had he even been listening? Tears leaked out her eyes as she blinked, trying to focus on the carpet. Maybe they were good sometimes, she could give him that, but what was good? How could it be good when sometimes she felt like she was dying?

Not accepting the silence, Angel sighed. “Seriously Buffy, until you’ve fired all your friends and have a room full of bodies on your hands, I…” He let that sentence drop; she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “All I’m hearing is – well, things I don’t wanna hear. But nothing I can judge. There’re worse relationships out there, believe me.”

“You don’t understand.” Again she tried to tell him, “You left so I could go in the light, right, could walk through the sunshine?” He was starting to look uncomfortable now, but that was fine with her. “Well, he wants me in the dark, wants me there with him. He tells me that’s where I belong. He wants me to be wrong.”

There was silence, but then Angel replied, “So, what, that means you _are_?” He was brusque and she started back. “Buffy,” he continued, shaking his head, “all that’s about him, not you – ‘cause, let me tell you, if you haven’t worked this out yet…” He paused, before saying, “Spike is full of shit.” They shared a stare. “If that doesn’t bug you, then I’d really worry you like him, because it’s his number one annoying characteristic. He’ll say anything – just to see if it touches a nerve…” Then Angel sighed, probably at the look on her face. “Don’t use him to beat yourself up,” he said. “It’s not worth it. If you treat him like a drug, he’ll become one – but he doesn’t have to be.”

“He doesn’t have a soul,” she tried, annoyed it had taken her so long to bring it up.

“And as I’m pretty sure you know,” he responded impatiently. “That’s not really the question.”

She scowled. Really, it was time for him to stop avoiding the elephant, if he wanted her to believe anything he said. “Who was Connor’s mother, Angel?” she asked, changing the subject, but not by much.

He told her.


	3. There's Not a Button for That

When Buffy came downstairs, Spike and the green guy from before were still waiting for her, sat at the bottom of the flight by her feet as she walked. Honestly, she didn’t know what to say; she felt empty – and tired.

“Is Wes here?” she asked Spike, thinking maybe she should get the particulars again.

He eyed her as if judging her reaction to Angel’s news. Looked like he’d found out before her, then; she wasn’t sure if she was grateful for him keeping it to himself. Nevertheless, she appreciated it as he begrudgingly kept on topic and answered her question. “No,” he said. “He went out.”

“And kind of in a hurry, too,” the green guy added, apparently oblivious to any tension. “You know, considering we have guests.” He stood up, offering his hand and pulling Buffy’s gaze away from Spike’s stare. “I’m Lorne, by the way. Sometime entertainer, sometime babysitter – though those overlap more than you’d think.”

A demon babysitter? Uncertain why she felt so comfortable with that, she shook his hand all the same and said, “I’m Buffy.”

“Oh, I know who you are,” he replied with a smile. It was kind of winning; she could feel herself relax. “We walk among legends with you in the room.”

Then her smile became a grimace. No legends. She’d had enough praise for one day. “Buffy’s fine.”

“I’m going to get some blood,” Spike said abruptly, standing up stalking off towards the kitchen.

She took his place on the stairs, watching him go (uncertain how she felt about it), while Lorne leaned back against the banister. “So, ‘Buffy’,” he asked after an uncomfortable silence, “what brought you down to LA?”

“A bus,” she replied distractedly – only to be disarmed when it made the demon grin. She sighed again. “Look, I’m pretty sure Spike told you… Something, anyway – and I’m feeling pretty chatted out so you might as well believe what he says. We’re here, but we’ll be gone soon. I have to get back to work.” At some point, the day after tomorrow. Was there a clock in here anywhere?

Lorne put his hands in his pockets, nonchalantly. “And who says the Chosen One’s not chipper,” he mused.

“No one,” she replied warningly, starting to feel a little hostile. “Not if they don’t wanna get staked.”

Raising his eyebrows, the guy seemed to realise it was time he shut up. She needed time to think. Apparently she wasn’t wrong, just herself, without any hope of fixing; apparently Angel had nearly gone bad again, with _Darla_ of all people, whom he’d killed for her before. The world was a mess. And Spike was…

“Oh, I get it,” Lorne said after a while, interrupting her thoughts – because he had a death wish, or something. “Our resident proud papa finally gave you the lowdown. Yeah, I needed time to process that one myself.” He whistled, “Hoo, boy, those were some tough times; not that the last few months have been coming up roses, but –”

Buffy was thinking about killing him, but thankfully she didn’t have to as his words were interrupted by an exclamation from the kitchen. “…bloody hell does he think he’s playing at?!”

“Spike?” she asked, standing up as he came storming into the lobby, tangerine-coloured mug in hand. (He always picked the ugliest, even when there was a choice; she figured it was a punk thing.)

Not letting her catch his eye, however, Spike’s focus was up the stairs. “An- _GEL_!” he bellowed, bringing the other vampire running, Connor in his arms. “What the fuck is this you’re drinking?” Holding the mug up like the hated bottle of Bud he’d found in her fridge that one time, his eyes were narrow as Angel came down the stairs. “Thought you were supposed to be noble.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Angel demanded, voice raised but not shouting. She kind of agreed. Couldn’t she catch a break? Just one? “Connor’s asleep, and –”

“I don’t give a _toss_ about your little boogie-woo,” Spike told him, glaring daggers at the bundle of blankets. “I want to know why you’re drinking _human blood_ , when the rest of us have to make do with good old fashioned swine, else we get ourselves done in.”

 _What?_ Buffy stared at Angel, entirely new distrust beginning to work its way through her gut. They were the same, it seemed, or similar, with the soulless vampires meaning more than they should. But this was different. This was more. How could he…?

“Now, hold up a second.” Lorne stepped in, raising his hands between the two vampires. “I picked that blood up just this afternoon and it’s _pig_. Almost going ‘oink’ it’s so fresh, the guy said – which was honestly more than I needed to know…”

“There’s something else in here,” Spike insisted, keeping his eyes locked on Angel and following him down the stairs. “Not much, but enough to take the edge off, and _smooth_ …” That was when Buffy cleared her throat, because, maybe Angel was an unknown, but Spike she could judge. He responded in the right way, though, doubling back and finally looking at her. “Not that I drank it down, Slayer,” he promised, unnecessarily waggling the nearly-full mug under her nose. It smelt of blood: metallic and gross. “Bloody tasty it was, but I stopped after a sip. Or a swallow. But that’s not the point.” He turned back to Angel. “Point is, you don’t have any for a while, you can tell – and the Winged Avenger here’s pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, getting the praise and the –”

“Give me that.” At last Angel halted the tirade, passing a fussing Connor to Lorne and plucking the mug from Spike’s hand as though it insulted his aesthetics.

Bringing the blood under his nose, Angel breathed in once, long and inhumanly slow, before he looked up, brow knitting. Then, quicker than Buffy could follow, he’d cast the cup away into the lobby and had Spike’s black t-shirt in his fist, hauling the other vampire onto his toes. The china crashed. Angel threatened, “You drink another drop of that blood and I will _end_ you, Spike, you hear me?” Apparently that wasn’t enough though, because he shook him, shouting louder, “ _You hear me_?”

It woke Connor up, bringing wails from Lorne’s arms even as the demon backed away from the scene. “Hey!” Buffy shouted for herself, pushing between the two and shoving Angel back up the stairs. “What the _hell_ is going on?” She was feeling worryingly possessive, like she had a duty of care as Spike’s principal bruiser. It was a strange feeling, but apparently not symptomatic of anything wrong, so she guessed she’d have to suck it up and repress like the next person.

“There was Connor’s blood in there,” Angel snarled, eyes flashing to her hand on Spike’s shirt. “His _blood_ in my _food_.”

“Well,” she reasoned, “Spike didn’t put it there, did he?” Though, from the way he was shifting beneath her hand, you’d think he valued his life at so little he might have done.

Setting his jaw, Angel seemed to rack his brain, sniffing as if remembering what he’d smelled around his son that day, and eventually coming to the rather obvious conclusion that Spike had nothing to do with this. Apart from the reporting, which, she thought, she would thank Angel not to discourage. “No,” he said at last, storming down the stairs and across the floor to where his coat was hung at reception, pulling a knife from underneath the phone. His words thundered. “But I know who did.”

In moments he was gone, leaving nothing but a crying baby in his wake.

Soon, however, the soft notes of Lorne’s lullaby soothed Connor to gurgly cheer, if not actual sleep – it turned out the guy was actually a very good singer, which made Buffy feel bad about being rude. No one spoke for a little while, until Lorne set the baby in the downstairs bassinet, sitting next to him and starting to tell the baby about his daddy’s anger issues and hate of porcelain over glass.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Spike whined standing next to her, over the sound of Lorne’s cheery bitching. “I’m bloody starving…”

Buffy looked at him, wondering how she was supposed to talk to him. Everything they’d done was like a bond between them, heavy as the anchor chain her dad had given her to hold when she was twelve. Far too much. It really felt like the fact she wasn’t wrong was one of those things she couldn’t tell him – but he knew it anyway, he obviously knew.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. “Maybe it’s time to head back to Sunnydale,” she said blandly, unable to lash out – it would have been her preference, but she couldn’t when he’d been the one acting right. Also because it was true. There didn’t seem much other option now that she’d found all she was gonna find; at least this way she’d still have a day to catch up with the others.

But, then, could they really leave now? No; she hadn’t told Angel about Holtz yet, nor about Aubrey being a plant. Somewhere along the line she’d forgotten she actually knew more than he did after her visit... Also, she was getting hungry too. “We could ask about petty cash, I guess?” Buffy suggested. “Maybe they’d be happy to lend us some?”

Spike seemed to catch something in her eyes, because he didn’t reply except to mutter agreeably, “Yeah, good plan.” That was strange. He continued, “I might’ve… Never mind.”

“Was that something about dinner?” Lorne called over, cuddly bear clasped in his hand. “Good idea,” he continued, getting up. “Apart from the ‘lending’; seriously, it’s on us.”

As Lorne opened draws at reception, Spike started fidgeting – but it was only when the cashbox actually hit the desk that he cleared his throat, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. “Uh, there’s no point looking in there, mate…” Buffy caught his eye, realisation dawning, and shook her head in disbelief. “Called in a few debts, is all,” he replied nonchalantly, shrugging as he re-pocketed the wallet.

“Well, don’t bother going out anyway,” Lorne said before she could argue, waving away Spike’s theft as if it were perfectly understandable. She blamed demon camaraderie, or possibly Angel’s cheapness. Whatever; maybe she was too tired to be angry. “We’ll order in,” Lorne continued. “Maybe get a couple of pizzas.” Mr. Green shrugged at their looks, turning away from the cashbox and proving there was booze as well as weapons underneath the counter. “That’s what I normally do when they keep me here late.” As he mixed three glasses of something strong, holding the soda canister like a pro, he nodded towards the drying blood on the floor. It was crusting quickly around the orange enamel shards. “Add in the maid service and I’m thinking we get the works for each of us, plus a couple sides and ice cream.”

OK, actually, maybe she’d seriously misjudged this guy – that all sounded almost reasonable. Childcare rates were high in LA, weren’t they? She met Spike’s eyes again, feeling herself soften.

“I like him,” Spike offered conspiratorially, nodding in Lorne’s direction. She couldn’t help but agree.

* * *

It was pretty much a party by the time Wes walked through the door, looking like he’d been chased by the hounds of hell, but had somehow got away. “Oh, are we eating?” he asked in a daze, taking in the half-eaten pizzas on the table, the three of them kicked back in their easy chairs, Connor content and asleep like the clean and well-fed baby he was, who’d just learned via plushies the principles of a basic pincer manoeuvre.

“There’s loads left,” Buffy offered, worrying about the cost again with a sudden swing of guilt. Wasn’t Wesley in charge here? He was gonna be mad, she could tell. Seriously mad, and she couldn’t afford this, not now, not when her paycheque came. “Lorne said…” she began desperately, putting the crust in her hand back on cardboard.

Wesley looked confused. “What?” he asked, before getting a clue, at which point he waved her worries away. “Oh, no, don’t worry about that; we can get another later. No, I only meant…” He lifted up the paper bag he was holding in his hand; the sound of glass clinked from within. “I bought champagne,” he finished, with a silly grin.

“Oh my!” Lorne said as she stared, not questioning but leaping out of his chair. “Let me get some flutes and the ice…”

Voicing her own thoughts, however, Spike asked suspiciously, “What’s the occasion?” She bit her lip, worrying again as Wesley took the bottles from the paper – had they crashed someone’s birthday? But that had to be wrong, right, because there was no one here…

“Have you ever felt like the world was against you?” Wesley asked, which was the stupidest question she’d ever heard. “Well, imagine that, only to find out it was all based on nothing, and that everything’s possible after all.”

For a moment Buffy thought he was making some sort of pointed comment, about her, about her situation – to which her only response was how _dare_ he, because that the spell had gone right didn’t fix anything, didn’t make anything better in her life. After scowling at him for a few moments, though, she realised he didn’t mean anything by it at all. He was talking about himself. “What happened?” she asked.

Wesley sat down solidly in a free chair, pulling a heavily laden slice of pizza from the table, before changing his mind and taking a glug of Spike’s whiskey-soda. He explained, scantily, as he carefully folded the pizza slice in two, “There was a prophecy, irrefutable, unavoidable. I – I’m afraid it’s what’s been making me so short recently. Well, in the…” He shook his head through that slight lapse into misery and bit through the pizza, sauce splurging into stubble; it was gross, in a mildly charming way. When he swallowed, he added, “But it must have been falsified, millennia ago, perhaps. Because I spoke to – the Loa Burger, and it told me that it wouldn’t come to pass in defined time. It might ‘emerge from the murk of the future’, but no prophecy could claim it to be true.”

As he said this, Lorne returned with the ice and their glasses, putting one bottle in the bucket and opening the other on his knees. “We’re not precious enough to need it chilled, are we?”

Wesley certainly wasn’t, making them all toast ‘cheers’ and then tipping back the wine with a smile that looked euphoric. She sipped from her own glass, not sure she’d ever had champagne and pretty sure she wouldn’t get it for her twenty-first next week. Probably she should make this count. “What was the prophecy?” she asked to distract herself, cradling the flute stem with both her hands. She wasn’t entirely sure she understood what he was talking about, especially not the part about burgers, but good news made a nice change and his happiness was almost infectious.

Laughing again, Wesley shook his head. “Would you believe it?” he asked. “I read that Angel would kill his son and I thought it could be true! When ‘neither the death nor consumption of the child by its father can be certain’ – it can all be prevented.” He continued on the pizza, dipping the crust into dip and savouring it like someone starved.

What the hell was going on in LA? She glanced at Spike, who looked as surprised as she felt, then over to the damp patch on the floor that they’d mopped, clearing the blood away. “I guess Spike stopped it?” she said disbelievingly, mostly to herself, as Wesley munched ‘hmm?’

There was, however, the _plat!_ sound of cardboard as Spike threw his pizza down. It made her look at him again, more surprised now to see bitterness on his face, accusation of something she didn’t know. What was his problem? She hadn’t even railed on him over the stealing (OK, so maybe her shoulders had cooled, but nothing worse). “No need to sound so surprised, ” he accused, before shaking his head, downing his glass and rising to his feet. “Cheers for the booze,” he said. “I’m out for a smoke.”

Speechless, she watched him go.

The silence Spike left was palpable, but she tried to sit through it, awkwardly sipping champagne and waiting for the atmosphere to return to normal. It didn’t. In the end Lorne intervened: “Hey, firecracker,” he told her in a stage-whisper enunciated by drink, as if he was used to stage managing these things, “when he does that, you’re supposed to go after him.”

“But…” she replied, to the sounds of Wesley picking up the pace on his food. It wouldn’t help. It never helped. “I’ve done that before. There was singing – and then –”

Waving the way Spike had gone, Lorne suggested, “Try again; what’s it gonna do?”

Not help, obviously.

But go she did eventually, grumbling as she rose from her seat. Leaving the food and drink for the garden’s cool night, she found Spike smoking as he leaned against the hotel wall, surrounded by the soothing scent of jasmine and tobacco.

He snorted when he saw her. “Back at this then, are we?” he asked, tapping ash onto the patio’s flagstones.

“Back at what?” she asked, off-guard and still not sure what she was doing.

He looked her up and down. “You following me around to make sure I know how much you don’t wanna be with me.”

“That never happened.” Well, not exactly anyway… “What’s your problem?”

He shrugged insincerely, taking another drag.

Feeling like she was being dragged down the route of reverse psychology, but still not wanting him to think of her as a _complete_ bitch, Buffy offered, “Maybe I came out here to say ‘good job’, you know, on the blood thing. ‘Cause that was good.”

He snorted again; she winced. This was why she didn’t praise Spike for anything, because for some reason it always came out like a patronising pat on the head. And he never reacted well to those. “Thanks,” he said sarcastically, sucking in smoke and then aiming it her way. “Say, I’ve got a tummy needs rubbing if you fancy a surprise…”

Wrinkling her nose, at the smell and at the image, Buffy tried not to overreact. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You meant it _exactly_ like that,” he told her, eyes straight on hers. She didn’t understand why he was so annoyed about this and apparently he could tell, because he shook his head, grinning before he explained, “You think you’re so much better than me, with your perfect little Slayer soul. Few nasty thoughts, yeah, they had you scared for a bit, but you got the measure of them in the end, so here you are right back on your high horse, expecting the worst with no chance of reprieve.”

She blinked. “I’m sorry; did I miss a memo?” When that got nothing, she waved a hand towards the Hyperion, towards everything that had happened inside. “I thought what we learned here is that Buffy’s life being screwed is down to nothing but her own stuff – yay, ha ha for you; the Slayer’s sleeping with the evil dead all off her own choice.”

Angrily, Spike dropped the end of his smoke and stubbed it hard into the ground. “It was always your own bloody choice,” he muttered, just loud enough for her to hear. “Fact is, you only allowed yourself to make it when you had the excuse.”

For a moment she couldn’t believe she’d heard him right. “How _dare_ you?” she asked, getting angry herself and bringing his dark eyes back up to hers. “Thinking I was – it was tearing me up inside.” This really showed his true colours; how could she have been so _stupid_ to believe… “You say you love me, but you’d rather I still thought all that, just so you could get in my –”

“You say I can’t love you at all!” he snapped back, voice rising. Oh yeah. “Can’t have it both ways, Summers, not even with standards as fucked as yours.” He snorted. “You won’t let me care for you, we both know that – but at least when you thought it was the spell I got a chance to try. Now it’s all back on your two shoulders, and you’ll hold it there till it crushes you.”

“So it’s all about you, is it, huh?” They were ruining Wes and Lorne’s party, the quietness of the garden, but she didn’t care. It was about time this came out. “I’m sorry, I got you wrong; this isn’t about doing a slayer at all, no, it’s one step up from that in your twisted little brain – this is all about having me depend on you, being your wilting Drusilla Part II.” She let her sarcasm run free. “Gee, thanks, Spike, but I’ve actually been through this before, and the conclusion is still pretty much that if you’re looking for a crying girl to coddle then you’ve come to the wrong place.”

“Don’t be bloody daft,” he dismissed, rolling his eyes. “I want you happy, that’s all I –”

“No,” she interrupted, setting her feet in a way that promised violence, even as she crossed her arms. “I don’t think you do.” He looked stung when she said that, but she didn’t soften. There was something about this she was missing, something she needed to figure out; she kept the accusation going, “You loved it when you thought I was wrong, when you thought I didn’t fit in, when you thought…” _Ah._ She smiled, which had him backing away from her. “When you thought I was like you.” How could she have forgotten, when this had all blown up the first time – outside that house she didn’t think about? Granted, the middle of a fight was never the greatest time for deep thinking, but she should have worked out how it all fit together: “Isn’t that what you said, way back when you chained me up? That it was wrong, you falling for me? You’ve probably been thinking it for years. Been telling yourself I’d _have_ to be wrong before I gave you a second look.”

Now she was definitely getting to him; he had his chin raised defensively, so she knew she’d almost cut down to the gooey centre. As she approached he tried to keep his distance, coming up against the wall again as she closed in.

He was still the one who made her see the world for what it was, just like she’d thought that afternoon – it was his bad luck that that made her see him as well. “That’s how it is for you, isn’t it?” she continued, putting a hand against his chest and loving the way his breath caught. “Hung around too long and started feeling things were wrong, that you had to be, that nothing made sense the way it had before. And I guess you blamed the chip, because it had to be _something_ – it couldn’t just be you, I mean – hello? You’re the Big Bad, feared and respected and evil; you’d never debase yourself by trying to protect the _Slayer_. So, I mean, how perfect was it when you realised there was something wrong with me as well?”

Gulping, he took hold of her wrist, staring at it as if he couldn’t work out whether to push her away from him. “Don’t talk like you know me,” he said at last, clenching his fingers.

“Oh no,” she began, leaning in, “because that’s the thing. You don’t know me either.” He looked up then, but she held his gaze steadily. “This is all me. My body, my mind, my soul – messed up more than anything, but mine. I know that now.” And she did, she really actually did. “Everything I’m feeling, that’s mine to deal with, there’s nobody responsible. It just is. Your problem is that you won’t acknowledge it’s the same with you.”

“Bollocks,” he said into her face, daring in his eyes.

Smiling, she replied, “Really? OK, then, tell me, what would it mean for you to decide your loving me, ‘cause that’s what you think it is, it doesn’t signify _anything_ perverse, or rebellious, or – soulful? What would you say if there’s no reason to be proud of it, or be scared of it? If it just is?”

He hated her; his eyes said so. Staring him down took a long time, but she did it, because she’d be damned if she was only going to let it be her who had their head screwed over by this trip. Or only her and Wesley. Or – whoever. Spike was coming too. That was how this was going down.

Eventually he spoke, deadly quiet. “So that’s it, is it? I can’t love you unless I let it say nothing about me, unless it means nothing.” His hands were still on her wrist, but lightly, one now running up her forearm, making it tingle. “That’s how you’re justifying this. The way you make me feel – I can’t help it, I could never help it. It’s got nothing to do with what I admire, with what I value, with what you mean to me.” On the last rub down of her arm he brought his fingers tighter, massaging the muscle before lifting her hand to kiss her wrist. “Your _problem_ , love, is that your analogy’s all backwards.”

She shook her head, pretty sure it wasn’t.

He kissed her again, lingering before he continued, “All that hate you feel, _that_ might be blank and churning inside you without direction or cause, but my love has a face – just like yours does.” Whatever he meant by that, she ignored it; he smiled, lowering his eyes and continuing, “I didn’t fall for you because my friends snatched me out of perfect happiness and told me to get by in hell – or because I couldn’t see anything else. I love you because you’re _not_ like the rest of my world. Took a while, yeah, but I know that well as you know you’re you. I _made_ my world change around me; I let you in and your eyes skewed what I saw – same way I dream of showing you what it’s like to be happy again. And, yeah, with the chip and all your friends standing on my face, that makes my life a little shit. But don’t get the two confused. The way you make me feel and the result of that on my life are two very different things.”

She had no idea what to say to that, even as her hand tingled like the lick of flames. When she’d been working this out, she’d been so sure she hadn’t had anything confused – but then she had kind of wanted his love to be the vampire-y love Angel had described yesterday: dismissible and weird. The problem was, if it were like that, she was pretty certain she wouldn’t be nearly so attracted to him. And she’d known that, hadn’t she? “Why is it,” she asked in the end, wanting to know even as his mouth worried the base of her thumb, “whenever something knocks you down, you always get back up?”

Smiling, he let their clasped hands drop. “Because there’s better places to be,” he told her, smiling wolfishly as he brought his mouth to hers. It felt frighteningly and inescapably real, and yet, even as she damned his cheesy lines, she kissed him, wondering what else she’d see.

* * *

Getting back felt like it took no time at all. Spike’s bike, of course, ate up the highway markedly quicker than the bus did, and the alcohol had hit her brain in a way that made the road noise much more entertaining than the night before – but, still, she couldn’t help but feel like Time itself had worked out she liked sitting on the back of the motorcycle, even while swimming in one of Wesley’s coats (borrowed for the journey), and sped up just to spite her.

“Back to the house?” Spike shouted above the engine, glancing over his shoulder as they passed the _Welcome to Sunnydale_ sign.

There was no way she could justify going to the crypt now. “Yeah, I guess!” she replied, also with a yell. And then, because she assumed he could hear her better than she could hear him, she continued, “I owe Dawn a day of stuff; should get some sleep. Unless – what day is it anyway?”

Spike laughed, his back shaking against her chest. “It’s Sunday, love!” he told her, and that, at least, was a relief. She really should have been there for Saturday, but Sunday meant that Dawn would still be free and she could keep the promise she’d reiterated on the phone about twenty-four hours ago. How long did she have before she was due back at work? Hell, she couldn’t even be sure – less than thirty-six hours by now, it had to be. She kind of wished they were still in LA.

 

_Eventually they came back inside, where they found Lorne turning his champagne flute slowly in his hand, a picture of quiet contemplation as Wesley took a phone call. “OK, Fred, yes; excellent,” he was saying, leaned back in his chair and eyeing up the pizza in his other hand. “Glad to hear you’re both all right. I’ll get Angel to let – Aubrey? Is that what you said her name was? I’ll tell Angel to let her know in the morning.”_

_“Oh yeah…” Buffy said, feeling sheepish as she sat back down, somehow getting pulled into Spike’s seat and sitting on his leg, which was comfy, it had to be said. Possibly because she’d spent the last few minutes grinding it tender, but no one needed to mention that. Even if she was still giggly from the satisfaction. To the point of actual giggles (the champagne didn’t help)._

_Spike huffed her hair and Lorne looked at her questioningly, but she managed to contain herself, moving past the laugh to her serious face. When Wesley had finished his call she explained, “Uh, that Aubrey woman, she was totally spying on you, by the way.”_

_Confused, but apparently not overly concerned, Wesley took another bite of pizza and asked, “What?”_

_Was she the only one noticing a Spike arm wrapping around her waist? Neither of the other two were looking at it, so she assumed she could just ignore it and continue. “Yeah,” she said. “You didn’t ever meet her, I guess, but she acted pretty shifty when we got here and Spike figured she was faking her vampire don’t-know-how. So I followed her when she’d left, right, and she’s working with this guy, Daniel Holtz? He’s a captain or something. I don’t know of what.” The arm inched her higher up her seat, a perfectly natural-looking adjustment, though it brought her backside against some – interesting terrain…_

_“Holtz?” Wesley and Lorne said together, shortly and loudly. Serious enough to distract her._

_“Yeah,” Buffy confirmed, resting her hands on the two arms that were now both across her stomach. “He’s got a mansion and a gang in Silver Lake.” Then she told them where to find it, before adding, “He’s pretty unstable; not surprisingly, I guess, what with the two-hundred year culture gap – but he’s getting himself majorly off-mission. It’s not gonna go well.”_

_“You’re right, of course,” Wesley replied, sounding more sober than she felt. He leaned back in his chair, picking at a stray thread in the upholstery. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about him; he’s a good man, by all accounts. Angel believes he’s a good man. In light of the prophecy, I confess I found myself thinking…” Then he shook his head, not wanting to entertain that thought as he looked back up at the group. “We’ll have to think about how to engage him going forward, but it should be manageable; we can sabotage his operation if needs be. Thank you for finding him out.”_

_“No problem,” Buffy replied, warmth suffusing her that she’d done something right. Leaning back against Spike, she sighed, sinking into his body and planning to rest there until Angel came home._

 

The bike turned sharply up Revello Drive, to find 1630 looking dark and empty, not even the porch light on to welcome her home. It was sensible, saving the electricity – which hopefully hadn’t been turned off – but, still, it reminded her why she’d chosen the bus station the night before. “I hate coming back here,” she said stiffly, as Spike killed the engine and wrenched the bike’s brake.

“What’s that?” he asked, taking her hand unnecessarily as they climbed down to the driveway.

Still looking at the dark house, cold and a little shivery from the ride, Buffy sighed. “It’s meant to be nice and familiar,” she said, not without irony as she took in the ragged grass and the weeds latching onto the basement window, the paint peeling from the woodwork. “I mean, this is the house that Mom bought – but all it does is remind me she isn’t here anymore.” When she said it, it felt like that was what she’d been avoiding all day. God, she was pathetic…

Spike shrugged, lighting up and not acting shocked at all. She wasn’t sure why she’d expected him to be. “Then move,” he said, when he’d taken a puff and flicked his lighter closed. “No reason why you can’t. Dawn might kick up a fuss, but she’s a pragmatic little thing at the end of it.”

“But that…” _That would mean planning._ That was what it came down to, wasn’t it? Thinking ahead, about the future. Making lists, getting a sense of the mortgage stuff and Dad’s payment plan.

“Could put her in charge of finding somewhere,” Spike continued, presumably still talking about Dawn. “She spends half her life at the Magic Box; Anya’ll get her a good deal.”

Buffy looked at him askance, not quite believing what she was hearing, not least because it all sounded sensible so far. “Are you seriously giving me advice?”

Why were things always harder in Sunnydale? Naturally that comment made Spike bristle, sending the end of his cigarette a brighter orange as he sucked in more smoke. “Who was it, asking about finances a few weeks ago?” he asked, before explaining defensively, “Been giving it some thought. And your sis’s not that much of a mystery, not with you two so alike.”

“We are _so_ not…” she began, before giving up on that sentence. Turning to face him, she looked at him properly, the gloomy light of the streetlamp outside 1632 curving round his face and sharpening his features. It was strange, thinking of him as hers to look at, but who else was there? Really? Who cared for how long she looked at his face? “Thanks,” she said simply, still looking.

His eyebrow quirked and then he blinked, surprised to find her watching him. “No problem,” he replied neutrally, though he couldn’t seem to prevent a smile starting on his lips.

After that there didn’t seem much to say, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to go inside yet. Watching Spike in the night was almost peaceful, as he breathed regularly in and out, as the white stick in his fingers slowly burned down to ash. When he crushed the butt beneath his foot and kicked it into the road, she wondered whether she should tell him off – but then, she let so little of what she liked him doing go unpraised that, in the end, it didn’t seem quite fair to get annoyed about littering. The idea of congratulating him every time he did something equivalently worthy, like rinsing out his mug, maybe, after he used it for blood, that seemed really ridiculous.

He did it quite often, though. It amused her how he seemed to always have another blood bag squirreled away in her freezer somewhere. She could never see them, but Dawn pulled them out like rabbits from a hat. Thinking about Dawn… “You should –” she began, before stopping, taking a breath and trying to force herself not to wimp out. She was who she was, she remembered, and she’d always managed to keep her life sustainable and stable in the past, so she could do it now. Hopefully. Maybe. Forcing herself through the sentence, she said, “You should come by tonight.” And then she immediately bit her lip, uncertain how he’d react.

Not that she should have worried, really; he reacted by stepping in closer, filling the air around her with the smell of tobacco, which she knew was technically disgusting, but turned her on all the same. She couldn’t help it that she’d been having sex for the last month in a place where the air tasted of the stuff. “And why’s that, then?” Spike’s words overlaid the smell, rumbling softly, close to her ear as he ran fingers along the sleeves of her borrowed jacket. He had the right idea, actually, because Coat of Wesley wasn’t very sexy. Also, if she was going to send that coat back to Angel, it was probably polite not to make him want to burn it on receipt. She was getting warmer; if she took it off, then…

No. There wasn’t time for this now. “I’m not telling them about us,” Buffy said firmly, stepping back. She couldn’t face that conversation – it just wasn’t possible, in pure and absolute terms. “But!” she added quickly, seeing his face harden. “This is a plan, right? I don’t ever have enough time to see everybody, so I need to start getting people in the same place.” Now he just looked incredulous, though that was understandable: replaying her words to herself suddenly invoked the image of her and Spike getting acrobatic in the living room while Willow and Dawn watched the Discovery Channel, munching popcorn. Brain bleach, if you please… “I mean – what I mean is, you should come by and then you can be there. Maybe people will get a clue – not that there will be noteworthy PDAs,” she interjected sternly, “but I figure that if they figure things out for themselves and it isn’t so much a go-seek the hidden secret as a ‘hey, Spike, it’s not so strange you’re here’ thing, then they’ll… You know?”

Buffy lost track of her explanation, which wasn’t entirely fully formed in her head anyway, but Spike seemed to pick it up, concluding cynically, “So the plan is to keep up the shagging without any sort of official aegis, but maybe introduce the Scoobies to the idea that you and me are done with the seething hatred of yore.”

“Does that work for you?” she asked nervously, taking the glint in his eye as a positive, though she was pretty sure it came from trying to work out how much touching (and how naughty) she’d let him get away with in public. This was not going to go well, she could see it now; Spike was such a mile-taker. Still, she knew, “I can’t keep doing what we were doing. I mean, I didn’t realise how hard things are until they weren’t.” And, wow, that made sense, but it was late – and he had to have realised, didn’t he, how much easier everything had been in LA? They’d spent a day being expected to come as a couple; she hadn’t had to explain him away or anything he said, even when it was rude. It hadn’t been the best day of her life or anything, but it sat a lot easier in her memory than most of the other days she’d had recently.

Spike inhaled, clearly frustrated even as he started making plans (doomed to fail). “Don’t have much choice,” he said. “It’s not like I can give you up, so it’s down to you, innit? Tell me what you want and I’ll, I’ll bloody ice the stars for you, Buffy, I’ll –”

“Just try not to piss off my friends, OK?” Buffy interrupted, sick of telling him with words that she wasn’t Jasmine and this wasn’t a magic carpet ride, even if the motorcycle drive had been pretty nice. “And… Don’t lie to Dawn, but don’t give her any more intel than what she asks for. It’s not her business.”

Spike nodded, agreeing immediately. “Fine,” he said.

“Right,” she replied.

“See you tonight, then?” Spike didn’t move, so she tried to sever contact by looking back to the house.

It was so dark, though, that she wasn’t even surprised when her feet stepped her back and her body had her kissing him, filling her vision with his bright, pale skin in glimpses as her eyelids fluttered. He didn’t seem surprised either, smoothing the oversized coat down her shoulders to toss it away, feeling her waist through her jacket then her ass through her jeans. As she pulled him closer, biting his bottom lip, she wondered what it was that kept her wanting him, since it was apparently all on her now. She didn’t think she could tell exactly, but she wasn’t entirely sure she was scared of the answer anymore.

Distantly, and much less interestingly than the desperate damsel gasp of her big bad vampire, there was a squeaking sound, like a door, maybe, or a window. It was very easy to ignore; she kept up the kissing, liking their rhythm. Then, however…

“YOU ARE SO _BUSTED_ , BUFFY!”

She leapt back; Spike looked dazed (and hot as hell). Her cheeks flamed.

There was silence after that, but Buffy remembered. _Yeah. This is why you don’t forget about Dawn._

Coming to his senses, however, Spike seemed to think there was a very easy way of dealing with this. He kissed her one more time, regaining ground and landing a smack on her lips with a close-mouthed flourish, so comical she couldn’t even be bothered to complain; whispered, “Tonight, love,” nonetheless, in a voice her sister was _never_ allowed to hear; then retreated to the bike with one last remark to the house: “WE’LL BE TALKING ABOUT MANNERS, BIT!” And then he roared away.

OK.

* * *

Thirty-four hours later – an hour and a half before she had to be at work – there was a vampire in her bed. The sun was up, but the curtains were closed, leaving one lonely shaft of light aglow on the floor. Something else was up as well, but that was getting to be quite the familiar bedfellow these days and better against her thigh than tenting the covers (not that there was anybody else left in the house).

Spike was asleep. She kind of wished he’d wake up, if only to say something crude that would jolt her towards responsibility. As things were, after all, she didn’t want to go anywhere; she was content lying on her side, warm weight of an arm across her waist, hand on the mattress near her breast, which she could feel beneath the covers with her fingers, the knuckles and muscles and nails. Warm and entertained, not least by the odd mutter about ducks Spike offered every now and then, she didn’t understand why she had to go back to that world of hot grease and fake smiles.

She felt bad for thinking it, but the wall was way more interesting.

 

_”Buffy, are you staring at the wall again?”_

_“What?” she replied, not really listening. Then she managed to shake herself out of it, turning to face Dawn on the couch, tuning back in to Drew Barrymore’s emoting on the TV. “No,” she told her sister, hopefully sounding indignant. “I was watching the movie.”_

_Dawn looked at her knowingly, spearing salted pasta onto her fork from the bowl in her lap. “Sure you were.” She chewed the popcorn substitute resentfully, swallowed and told her, “You need to wake up.”_

 

When Spike woke up, his whole body came alive: muscles that had been at rest grew tense around her torso; his fingers curled on the sheet, capturing her hand that she’d been twining with his, his rings biting into her skin; he inhaled like he’d had a shock and needed the oxygen. She figured he’d been doing that since he’d died, if not in the years before, but the new habit, which she’d just about trained him in, was to roll away the moment he’d done all this. It allowed him to avoid broken bones as she escaped.

“Wha-“ he began today, confused the moment he realised what he’d rolled on was a bed, in a room softly lit with daylight. Watching him, she didn’t want to explain, so instead listened hard to catch the mumble he aimed towards the ceiling: “Bloody hell,” he murmured. “Don’t fuck this up.”

Then he turned to face her, jerking again when he realised she was looking. “You’re such a loser,” she said, because he was – and she’d never quite realised before. Maybe this was the side Dawn saw.

“Oh yeah?” he replied to her all the same, quirking an eyebrow as he accepted the challenge.

“Uh huh.” She kept her face straight.

With a toss of his chin he became her Spike in a second: sinuous as he rolled over her, no trace of clumsiness as the mattress seemed to take him with a gentle, easy sigh. He pinned her wrists, leaning on his knees; she trapped him between her legs, biting her lip as she looked up. There was so much to see on his face in the morning light, stuff she never saw, like the soft shadows of the chain around his neck, swinging just behind his chin; the way his lips supped in breath, as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite choose his tone. That weird brain of his was working away behind his eyes, she could see it, trying to figure out how he could make this mean more than a morning quickie. She kind of loved the way he thought in bed.

In the end, though, he seemed to give up on ‘meaningful’, ducking his head and nudging the head of his cock against her. Of course, she wasn’t quite ready (which she could have told him), so he was back trying to psych her out, the gleam returning to his eye as he leaned closer. She expected some better foreplay, but she got nothing, just that gleam.

She wasn’t sure what the game was – at least not until she realised she’d been played. Because the damn stare was all it took. With the hard grip on her wrists, the soft skin between her legs, the warmth cocooning her feet and her exposed chest cooling in the air, her breath couldn’t help but hitch with the scent of him. All on its own her body flinched, a frisson of attraction making her heart beat faster.

“I’m a loser, eh?” he whispered, nostrils flared, grin like a predator.

“Fucking loser,” she tried to confirm, but it came out more like rapture as he slid slowly in, welcome completely.

“Oh ho,” he mocked as her eyes drifted closed, as her heels dug down and her head pushed back against the mattress. “What kind’s that then, love?”

She gasped as the rocking started, rolling with him so everything hit just right. It was excruciatingly good, that was what it was, but she could hardly say that, could she? This wasn’t fair; why did she have to suffer when all she’d wanted to do was insult him? He used to be good for insulting, but now all she got back was… How had he got so good at this, anyway? It felt like he’d spent hours practising, watching Elvis tapes in his crypt, slowed down maybe; she could see it –

The image made her laugh, quite suddenly, which startled them both. As Crypt-Spike hit rewind on the _Hound Dog_ footage she couldn’t stop laughing, harder and harder until the mood was impossible to maintain. It brought Bed-Spike to a retreat, freeing her wrists and leaning on his elbows even as she tried to wave him on. “You been snorting the hairspray, Slayer?” he asked, perturbed.

Giggling uncontrollably, Buffy tried to explain, “Elvis – wiggling at the TV…” She snorted involuntarily, shaking underneath him. “Never mind.”

Rolling his eyes, nay his whole body, with derision, Spike nonetheless didn’t seem too put out as he settled back beside her, moving carefully as if not to disrupt her giggles. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad you got _that_...” The sentence hung as he frowned at her, apparently uncertain how he was meant to react.

She laughed at his face, pretty sure she’d never again be scared of his snake-hips powers of seduction. (Although she wouldn’t mind having _some_ sex today; it would have to be later.) “I think you’re my kind of loser, you know?” she told him. _The kind who can take it._

For a moment Spike seemed to understand what she meant, even if he couldn’t quite believe it, frown dissolving into all kinds of hope.

It was too much, though, so she had to cut through the tension, adding with a quirk of a smile, “I mean, you’re sad to the bone.”

At least she made him snort, though that was followed by the frown of the _deeply_ offended (probably at the pun, which wasn’t her best). He glanced over her to the alarm clock for a distraction, then started kicking her none too gently out of bed. “Go and fry some death baps, Burger Queen,” he said as his foot pushed her naked towards the carpet. “We’ll sort that misconception later.”

Buffy smiled fully as she stood, walking to the bathroom with her own brand of elegance and fairly smug now she’d won that round. Sure, she had an eight hour shift and nine hours of the DMP ahead of her, but she’d get through that. Then she’d go to the 24hr market and get food, come home and see if Dawn had got anywhere with the house stuff. Take Spike on patrol and see if she’d win again. Keep on winning, maybe a minute at a time.

The day would fill itself up, she decided. She had things to do.

* * *

When they found Katrina that night, it hurt like nothing else. But Buffy realised the corpse had long gone cold.

.


End file.
